Demystifying Disability

Download or read book Demystifying Disability written by Emily Ladau and published by Ten Speed Press. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An approachable guide to being a thoughtful, informed ally to disabled people, with actionable steps for what to say and do (and what not to do) and how you can help make the world a more inclusive place ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: NPR, Booklist • “A candid, accessible cheat sheet for anyone who wants to thoughtfully join the conversation . . . Emily makes the intimidating approachable and the complicated clear.”—Rebekah Taussig, author of Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary, Resilient, Disabled Body People with disabilities are the world’s largest minority, an estimated 15 percent of the global population. But many of us—disabled and nondisabled alike—don’t know how to act, what to say, or how to be an ally to the disability community. What are the appropriate ways to think, talk, and ask about disability? Demystifying Disability is a friendly handbook on the important disability issues you need to know about, including: • Recognizing and avoiding ableism (discrimination toward disabled people) • Practicing good disability etiquette • Ensuring accessibility becomes your standard practice, from everyday communication to planning special events • Appreciating disability history and identity • Identifying and speaking up about disability stereotypes in media Authored by celebrated disability rights advocate, speaker, and writer Emily Ladau, this practical, intersectional guide offers all readers a welcoming place to understand disability as part of the human experience. Praise for Demystifying Disability “Whether you have a disability, or you are non-disabled, Demystifying Disability is a MUST READ. Emily Ladau is a wise spirit who thinks deeply and writes exquisitely.”—Judy Heumann, international disability rights advocate and author of Being Heumann “Emily Ladau has done her homework, and Demystifying Disability is her candid, accessible cheat sheet for anyone who wants to thoughtfully join the conversation. A teacher who makes you forget you’re learning, Emily makes the intimidating approachable and the complicated clear. This book is a generous and needed gift.”—Rebekah Taussig, author of Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body

Download or read book How to Be an Ally: Actions You Can Take for a Stronger, Happier Workplace written by Melinda Briana Epler and published by McGraw Hill Professional. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through the power of allyship, each of us can create an equitable, innovative workplace where everyone feels safe, valued, and able to thrive How can you help someone else thrive? How can you interrupt the biases, microaggressions, and inequities that prevent people around you from excelling? How can you build an innovative workplace fueled by equity, diversity and belonging? Every business leader today should be asking themselves these questions. Systems and processes have been skewed too long in favor of some at the expense of others, and things are changing—fast. How to Be an Ally shows how to take personal responsibility for driving change that’s good for people—and for business. You’ll learn the ins and outs of allyship and build the knowledge and skills you need to: Listen and learn new perspectives Identify your own biases Avoid unintentionally harming people with microaggressions Express empathy with courage Advocate for people in small, everyday ways Rethink your work to be more inclusive, equitable, and accessible Build team norms that cultivate allyship Create equitable, inclusive systems and processes Uniquely insightful and extremely timely, How to Be an Ally humanizes diversity and inclusion and facilitates greater empathy and understanding between people of all identities. It teaches us that every individual can learn about the imbalance in opportunity and work to correct it. The key to true diversity, equity, and inclusion is allyship. This one-of-a-kind guide provides everything you need to use allyship to create a better workplace for ourselves and our colleagues.

Download or read book A Disability History of the United States written by Kim E. Nielsen and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2012-10-02 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book to cover the entirety of disability history, from pre-1492 to the present Disability is not just the story of someone we love or the story of whom we may become; rather it is undoubtedly the story of our nation. Covering the entirety of US history from pre-1492 to the present, A Disability History of the United States is the first book to place the experiences of people with disabilities at the center of the American narrative. In many ways, it’s a familiar telling. In other ways, however, it is a radical repositioning of US history. By doing so, the book casts new light on familiar stories, such as slavery and immigration, while breaking ground about the ties between nativism and oralism in the late nineteenth century and the role of ableism in the development of democracy. A Disability History of the United States pulls from primary-source documents and social histories to retell American history through the eyes, words, and impressions of the people who lived it. As historian and disability scholar Nielsen argues, to understand disability history isn’t to narrowly focus on a series of individual triumphs but rather to examine mass movements and pivotal daily events through the lens of varied experiences. Throughout the book, Nielsen deftly illustrates how concepts of disability have deeply shaped the American experience—from deciding who was allowed to immigrate to establishing labor laws and justifying slavery and gender discrimination. Included are absorbing—at times horrific—narratives of blinded slaves being thrown overboard and women being involuntarily sterilized, as well as triumphant accounts of disabled miners organizing strikes and disability rights activists picketing Washington. Engrossing and profound, A Disability History of the United States fundamentally reinterprets how we view our nation’s past: from a stifling master narrative to a shared history that encompasses us all.

Download or read book The Disability Experience written by Hannalora Leavitt and published by Orca Book Publishers. This book was released on 2021-04-13 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: People with disabilities (PWDs) have the same aspirations for their lives as you do for yours. The difference is that PWDs don’t have the same access to education, employment, housing, transportation and healthcare in order to achieve their goals. In The Disability Experience you’ll meet people with different kinds of disabilities, and you'll begin to understand the ways PWDs have been ignored, reviled and marginalized throughout history. The book also celebrates the triumphs and achievements of PWDs and shares the powerful stories of those who have fought for change. The epub edition of this title is fully accessible.

Download or read book Disability Visibility (Adapted for Young Adults) written by Alice Wong and published by Delacorte Press. This book was released on 2021-10-26 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Disabled young people will be proud to see themselves reflected in this hopeful, compelling, and insightful essay collection, adapted for young adults from the critically acclaimed adult book, Disability Visibility: First Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century that "sheds light on the experience of life as an individual with disabilities, as told by none other than authors with these life experiences." --Chicago Tribune, "Best books published in summer 2020" (Vintage/Knopf Doubleday edition). The seventeen eye-opening essays in Disability Visibility, all written by disabled people, offer keen insight into the complex and rich disability experience, examining life's ableism and inequality, its challenges and losses, and celebrating its wisdom, passion, and joy. The accounts in this collection ask readers to think about disabled people not as individuals who need to be “fixed,” but as members of a community with its own history, culture, and movements. They offer diverse perspectives that speak to past, present, and future generations. It is essential reading for all.

Download or read book Disability Visibility written by Alice Wong and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2020-06-30 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking collection of first-person writing on the joys and challenges of the modern disability experience: Disability Visibility brings together the voices of activists, authors, lawyers, politicians, artists, and everyday people whose daily lives are, in the words of playwright Neil Marcus, "an art . . . an ingenious way to live." • Edited by MacArthur "Genius Grant" Fellow Alice Wong “Shares perspectives that are too often missing from such decision-making about accessibility.” —The Washington Post According to the last census, one in five people in the United States lives with a disability. Some are visible, some are hidden--but all are underrepresented in media and popular culture. Now, just in time for the thirtieth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, activist Alice Wong brings together an urgent, galvanizing collection of personal essays by contemporary disabled writers.There is Harriet McBryde Johnson's "Unspeakable Conversations," which describes her famous debate with Princeton philosopher Peter Singer over her own personhood. There is columnist s. e. smith's celebratory review of a work of theater by disabled performers. There are original pieces by up-and-coming authors like Keah Brown and Haben Girma. There are blog posts, manifestos, eulogies, and testimonies to Congress. Taken together, this anthology gives a glimpse of the vast richness and complexity of the disabled experience, highlighting the passions, talents, and everyday lives of this community. It invites readers to question their own assumptions and understandings. It celebrates and documents disability culture in the now. It looks to the future and past with hope and love.

Download or read book Sitting Pretty written by Rebekah Taussig and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-08-25 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A memoir-in-essays from disability advocate and creator of the Instagram account @sitting_pretty Rebekah Taussig, processing a lifetime of memories to paint a beautiful, nuanced portrait of a body that looks and moves differently than most. Growing up as a paralyzed girl during the 90s and early 2000s, Rebekah Taussig only saw disability depicted as something monstrous (The Hunchback of Notre Dame), inspirational (Helen Keller), or angelic (Forrest Gump). None of this felt right; and as she got older, she longed for more stories that allowed disability to be complex and ordinary, uncomfortable and fine, painful and fulfilling. Writing about the rhythms and textures of what it means to live in a body that doesn’t fit, Rebekah reflects on everything from the complications of kindness and charity, living both independently and dependently, experiencing intimacy, and how the pervasiveness of ableism in our everyday media directly translates to everyday life. Disability affects all of us, directly or indirectly, at one point or another. By exploring this truth in poignant and lyrical essays, Taussig illustrates the need for more stories and more voices to understand the diversity of humanity. Sitting Pretty challenges us as a society to be patient and vigilant, practical and imaginative, kind and relentless, as we set to work to write an entirely different story.