Special Collections
Disability Collection
Description: Bookshare is pleased to offer a collection focused on the topic of disability and accessibility. #disability
- Table View
- List View
Behind Our Eyes
by Marilyn Brandt SmithLaugh with the blind guy who gets in the wrong car and almost gets arrested. Cry with the little girl whose parents resent her blindness so much that they constantly break her spirit. Rejoice over battles won against burglars, abusive spouses, self-doubt, and health care personnel who keep forgetting their patient can't see. Reflect on the issues of employment, acceptance, independent travel, and the appreciation of nature and other hobbies. This anthology attempts to bridge the gap between how disabled people are viewed by society and how they really live. Read about the writers' workshop, and join the group if you enjoy writing.
Arts, Culture, and Blindness
by Simon HayhoeThis book explores one of the most powerful myths in modern society: the myth that blind people are incapable of understanding and creating visual arts.
Another Eyesight
by Julia Ionides and Peter HowellThis book provides an overview and some in-depth information about the many ways of creating multi-sensory access for blind and partially sighted people to art, nature and historical sites.
Animal Helpers for the Disabled
by Deborah KentWritten for children in the middle grades, this book gives a brief history of the assistance-dog movement and the many ways in which dogs (as well as, in some instances, other animals) work as partners with people with disabilities. Chapters explore how assistance dogs are trained, living with an assistance dog, and legislation regarding access to public accommodations.
Americans with Disabilities
by Anita Silvers and Leslie Pickering FrancisFew laws have sparked as much debate as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), passed by Congress in 1990. With thought-provoking analysis by noted experts in a variety of fields, this book provides a keen understanding of the consequences of the law--for both those who oppose burdensome costs of the law and those who feel it must do more to protect citizens with disabilities from intolerance and social limitation.
Accommodations--or Just Good Teaching?
by Bonnie M. Hodge and Jennie Preston-SabinThis is an excellent book for college professors, college students with disabilities, or people working with disabled college students. it explains the different accommendations available for these students, and what exactly the law covers. Definitely worth reading if you are a student planning to go to college and who have a disability.
The Accessible Museum Model Programs of Accessibility for Disabled and Older People
by American Association of MuseumsA very interesting guide to museums of all kinds, which cater to accessibility for disabled and older people.
About Us
by Peter Catapano and Rosemarie Garland-ThomsonBased on the pioneering New York Times series, About Us collects the personal essays and reflections that have transformed the national conversation around disability.
Boldly claiming a space in which people with disabilities can be seen and heard as they are—not as others perceive them—About Us captures the voices of a community that has for too long been stereotyped and misrepresented. Speaking not only to those with disabilities, but also to their families, coworkers and support networks, the authors in About Us offer intimate stories of how they navigate a world not built for them. Since its 2016 debut, the popular New York Times’ “Disability” column has transformed the national dialogue around disability. Now, echoing the refrain of the disability rights movement, “Nothing about us without us,” this landmark collection gathers the most powerful essays from the series that speak to the fullness of human experience—stories about first romance, childhood shame and isolation, segregation, professional ambition, child-bearing and parenting, aging and beyond.
Reflecting on the fraught conversations around disability—from the friend who says “I don’t think of you as disabled,” to the father who scolds his child with attention differences, “Stop it stop it stop it what is wrong with you?”—the stories here reveal the range of responses, and the variety of consequences, to being labeled as “disabled” by the broader public.
Here, a writer recounts her path through medical school as a wheelchair user—forging a unique bridge between patients with disabilities and their physicians. An acclaimed artist with spina bifida discusses her art practice as one that invites us to “stretch ourselves toward a world where all bodies are exquisite.” With these notes of triumph, these stories also offer honest portrayals of frustration over access to medical care, the burden of social stigma and the nearly constant need to self-advocate in the public realm.
In its final sections, About Us turns to the questions of love, family and joy to show how it is possible to revel in life as a person with disabilities. Subverting the pervasive belief that disability results in relentless suffering and isolation, a quadriplegic writer reveals how she rediscovered intimacy without touch, and a mother with a chronic illness shares what her condition has taught her young children. With a foreword by Andrew Solomon and introductory comments by co-editors Peter Catapano and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, About Us is a landmark publication of the disability movement for readers of all backgrounds, forms and abilities.
Topics Include: Becoming Disabled • Mental Illness is not a Horror Show • Disability and the Right to Choose • Brain Injury and the Civil Right We Don’t Think • The Deaf Body in Public Space • The Everyday Anxiety of the Stutterer • I Use a Wheelchair. And Yes, I’m Your Doctor • A Symbol for “Nobody” That’s Really for Everybody • Flying While Blind • My $1,000 Anxiety Attack • A Girlfriend of My Own • The Three-Legged Dog Who Carried Me • Passing My Disability On to My Children • I Have Diabetes. Am I to Blame? • Learning to Sing Again • A Disabled Life is a Life Worth Living