Disability History and Culture
“Nothing about us, without us!” That’s the overarching message of these pieces.
- Activism and Advocacy
- Autism and Neurodiversity
- Community Living
- Criminal Justice
- Disability History and Culture
- Disability Vote
- Education
- Emergency Preparedness
- Employment
- Family
- Health
- LGBTQIA+
- Media
- Mental Health
- Policy
- Race and Disability
- Relationships and Sex
- Sexual Harassment and Abuse
- Storytellers
- Technology
- Transportation
For the Disability Community, Authentic Representation Makes a World of Difference
When I was in sixth grade, I started a scrapbook of articles about disabled people. Each article was carefully cut out from newspapers and magazines, or printed out from the early 2000s Internet, and slipped into a page protector in…
Rooted in Rights Reviews – Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist
The prologue to Being Heumann: An Unrepentant Memoir of a Disability Rights Activist by Judith Heumann with Kristen Joiner starts with the words, “I never wished I didn’t have a disability.” It’s a powerful way to begin a memoir, one…
Finding Peace On The Disability Terminology Battlefield
I was a junior in college, newly transferred from a small campus where I was the only wheelchair user to a bigger university known for its disabled community. “I don’t want to sit at the cripple table,” I said to…
Friendsgiving is my Favorite Queer, Disabled Chosen Family Holiday
Our first Friendsgiving was in a dorm apartment on the third floor; we carried my friend, who has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair, up the stairs along with her manual wheelchair. We drank cheap wine and ate home-cooked turkey…
Rooted in Rights Reviews – Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law
In her memoir Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law, Haben Girma welcomes readers into her world. “I like my deafblind world. It’s comfortable, familiar. It doesn’t feel small or limited,” she writes, and the memoir illustrates that. …
Two Generations Reflect on Life Before and After the Americans with Disabilities Act
The following is a conversation about attitudes, access, and ableism before and after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) between Laura and Wren Reeve, mother and offspring, aged 48 and 19. Both have multiple chronic illnesses (between …
Pharmaceutical Sponsorship’s Threat to Dwarf Pride
Addressing disability pride in her book The Minority Body, Elizabeth Barnes writes, “the benefits of pride movements are not merely emotional or affective – what or how we feel. Pride movements also affect what we can know.” Her argument is…
I’m Not Sorry If My Disability Makes You Uncomfortable
I spent the first 30 years of my life doing everything I could to not let people know I couldn’t see things. I ordered the same things at the fast food restaurant, I got dropped off a block away so nobody knew that my parents were driving me, I didn’t follow my dream to study medicine or be a scientist.