In honour of Disability History month, the Online Library is sharing a few interesting reads from our collection that focus on various issues related to disabilities, ableism and how we can better include people with all disabilities into our global community. If there is a particular title, you feel might help promote Disability Awareness, please feel free to send us a suggestion.
The Online Library has written a short accessibility guide with tips on how to make the most of Online Library resources, such as activating text-to-speech features to help those who are visually impaired.
More Than Medals: A History of the Paralympics and Disability Sports in Postwar Japan by Dennis Frost (2022)
Follow the creation and success of the Paralympics. Hear the inspiring tale of how one town’s choice to embrace competitive wheelchair racing led to a massive tourism boom.
Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education by Jay T. Dolmage (2017)
The book that has started the movement for Academia to openly include and public acknowledge those with disabilities in the community. Dolmage’s well researched piece shows the evolution of Academia’s awkward history with it’s workers with disabilities.
Ableism in Academia by Nicole Brown & Jennifer Lee (2020)
Similar in it’s focus to Dolmage’s book but with a personal approach, this book is filled with personal stories and interviews of academics dealing with their disabilities in the modern day workplace.
Gellman, Irwin (01/01/2019). Secret Affairs: Franklin Roosevelt, Cordell Hull, and Sumner Welle
Read the secret techniques President Roosevelt had to incorporate to hide his polio from the public and the media in order to avoid the ableism of the early and mid-twentieth century.
"Peter Dinklage". People magazine, 60 (15), p. 115.
Read this inspiring piece on how actor, Peter Dinklage has broken discrimination barriers and taken audiences from viewing him as ‘Special Needs’ to ‘Special and Spectacular’ in roles ranging from “Star Wars” to “Hunger Games” and “Game of Thrones”.
Teaching Myself To See by Tito Mukhopadhyay (2021)
Follow the author as he gives examples of what it’s like to live with autism in his visually selective world (always processing the overwhelming onslaught of details). Tito openly shares his story with readers to help them better understand first-hand how he manages to navigate our world in a “hyper-visual” way.
Black Disability Politics by Sami Schalk (2022)
Incorporating data from both the Black Panther Party Archives and National Black Women’s Health Project (USA), Schalk draws from her research to identify the key challenges to creating anti-racist/anti-sexist and anti-ableist health care provision in public health initiatives.
Apgar, A. 2023, The Disabled Child: Memoirs of a Normal Future, University of Michigan Press
Amanda Apgar takes on the tough role of breaking down the disparity in parental memoirs of life with a disabled child….and what we can learn to help all families struggling to incorporate their children into a productive and safe world.
Robertson, M., Ley, A. & Light, E. 2019, The First into the Dark: The Nazi Persecution of the Disabled, UTS ePress.
This book details a darker time when anyone with a disability was a potential medical experiment under Nazi doctors’ supposed ‘studies and treatments’.
Grover & Piggott 2015, Disabled People, Work and Welfare, 1st edn, Policy Press, Bristol.
The experiences of people with diverse disabilities working in three cultures (Australia, America and Scotland) are interwoven, compared and contrasted for an easy read allowing the reader to come to their own conclusions on what works and what doesn’t and what to do next.
Krull, H. & Oguz, M. 2014, Health and Economic Outcomes in the Alumni of the Wounded Warrior Project: 2010–2012, 1st edn, RAND Corporation, Santa Monica
This qualitative study provides an analysis of the Wounded Warrier Project. An exciting read about the new sciences incorporated into healing trauma and finding ways for former members of the active military to re-enter society.
Fries, K. 2021, In the Province of the Gods, The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison.
Kenny Fries opens up about his own experience as a disabled foreigner in Japan. His real life journey including many meetings along his path, where it is slowly illuminated that the Japanese have already very subtly created a form of inclusion with disabled gods, one-eyed samurai, blind chanting priests and a few more modern surprises than he expects.
Series, L. 2022;2021;, Deprivation of Liberty in the Shadows of the Institution, 1st edn, Bristol University Press, Bristol.
What may start out as a dark read on the history of Victorian social care turns into a thoughtful and compassionate suggestion for the present. Author, Lucy Series takes readers on an insightful journey through the history of mental illness and mental health care challenges.
Razza, N.J. & Tomasulo, D.J. 2005, Healing trauma: The power of group treatment for people with intellectual disabilities, American Psychological Association, Washington;US;DC;
Nancy Razza is an expert author of many inspiring books covering everything in psychotherapy related to the challenges of individual dealings with intellectual disabilities. Many of Nancy Razza’s other works are also available for Psychology students via the Online Library’s APA Psych Books database.