2026-03-25
Karin Jansson
The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities affirms that persons with disabilities have legal capacity on an equal basis with others, recognising their right to make legally significant decisions and have those decisions respected. Some individuals, however, may need support to understand, make, and act upon such decisions. This article critically examines how legal guardians in Sweden interpret and perform their role in relation to adults with intellectual disabilities. Based on 16 qualitative interviews, the analysis draws on governmentality theory to explore how power operates within guardianship relationships. Although guardianship is formally presented as a supportive measure, everyday practices often merge support with control, limiting autonomy through conditional participation, financial oversight, and moral regulation. Guardians frequently justify these restrictions through assumptions of incapacity and interpretations of ‘best interests’, positioning themselves as both protectors and disciplinarians. Consequently, guardianship may function as behavioural governance, fostering compliance rather than self-determination.
2026-03-18
Kateryna Bondar, Olena Shestopalova, Thomas Barow
Children with disabilities in conflict settings face compounded risks of exclusion, trauma, and disrupted education. In the ongoing war in Ukraine, families from de-occupied territories confront displacement, loss of services, and the burden of invisible caregiving labour. This research examines the perspective of parents of children with disabilities on how to cope with the situation. Their specific needs are highlighted and serve as a basis for developing support measures. The research is theoretically grounded in group socialisation theory, trauma-informed psychology, and the concept of solastalgia. Methodologically, 35 semi-structured parent interviews were thematically analysed. Four themes emerged: loss of safety and the search for control, digital technologies as stabilising anchors, disrupted peer interaction, and the impact of parental trauma. Parents described extensive invisible labour to support children’s fragile attempts at friendship, emotional regulation, and belonging. They perceive inclusive schools as both protective and precarious. The study concluded that resilience depends on dual-focus interventions that combine inclusive peer environments for children with psychosocial support for caregivers.
2026-02-12
Cátia Casimiro, Carla Sousa, Michael J. Heron
Accessible communication enables individuals with communication difficulties to understand and access information in a manner that is understandable and perceptible to them. As it stands, it can be useful not only for non-native speakers and illiterate individuals but also for neurodivergent people, namely considering a more social view of accessibility, aimed at accommodating different support needs through a wide range of language adaptations. The aim of this scoping review is to understand the state-of-the-art of accessible written communication for neurodivergent individuals in general. Studies had to be peer-reviewed, published between 2008–2023 in Portuguese and/or English, and focus on neurodiversity, particularly neurodivergent people and written accessibility. Overall, most studies centred around understandability and readability, but also on digital accessibility and guidelines. Theories related to machine learning, cognitive load and communication, with neurodivergent people not having any decision-making power in most. With the majority being centred on social participation and medical information, future research should include areas that acknowledge neurodivergent individuals as full members of society, including cultural and leisure contexts.
2026-01-23
Kristina Engwall, Anthon Sand Jørgensen, Hisayo Katsui
This article explores the ‘transformed institutionalization’ of individuals with intellectual disabilities in Denmark, Finland, and Sweden. The concept refers to how living arrangements formally classified as non-institutional settings in practice retain key features of traditional institutions. This is a critical, thematic study based on literature from a wide-ranging field, aiming to offer a nuanced understanding of the challenges in achieving full deinstitutionalization. Three institutional trends are scrutinized across the three countries: (1) the increasing number of residents per unit, (2) the persistence of institutional cultures, and (3) the lack of individualized support. In accordance with the argument that deinstitutionalization did not eliminate the mechanisms of control but rather transformed them, we argue that institutional logics persist and transform in ostensibly post-institutional settings. Examining this ‘transformed institutionalization’ also calls into question the Nordic countries’ reputation as leaders in the development of social welfare services for people with intellectual disabilities.
2026-01-06
Nora Aneth Pava-Ripoll, Nora Lucía Gómez-Victoria, Beatriz Eugenia Guerrero-Arias
Background: We investigated speech-language pathology (SLP) discourses in Colombia (1966–2025) to understand how the profession has exerted power over communicative subjects, how it has contributed to the configuration of a healthy national body, and how it has participated in the establishment of normalcy-abnormality standards in communication. Objective: Drawing on critical and poststructuralist theories, we positioned ourselves to uncover biopower discourses embedded in professional practice. Method: We used critical discourse analysis to approach biopower configurations in SLP discourses. Findings: We identified three discourses: the eugenic, the mercantile, and body customization. These discourses function as therapeutic devices that assemble diverse elements for managing communication. Conclusion: It is shown how SLP discourses have incorporated the search for bodily and communicative perfection through biological means, the construction of SLP therapy as services and technologies for consumers, and body modification at ease. SLP devices aim to bring people closer to the expected normative limits of communication. Contribution: SLPs might take a critical stance towards social justice.
2025-12-10
Ulysse Lecomte, Maryline Thenot, Laetitia Lethielleux, Araceli De los Ríos Berjillos
The academic community is increasingly turning to studies exploring the intersectionality of women with disabilities and the sources of multiple discrimination. However, despite this growing literature, the professional inclusion of women with disabilities remains a major problem, with a global employment rate of less than 20%. In this context, it seems essential to facilitate the work of researchers by providing them with key benchmarks and recommendations based on an intersectional bibliometric analysis of the topic. This article therefore presents the results of a bibliometric analysis on the professional integration of women with disabilities, with a particular focus on intersectionality, based on a corpus of 1,810 articles from the Scopus database. The main findings highlight several important avenues for further research in this area. They also highlight the fact that existing publications remain general, focusing more on professional inclusion of diversity, and that they come from sources that are unevenly distributed geographically and economically. This underlines the need for greater academic attention to the specific issue of the professional integration of women with disabilities, in particular through the creation of more specialised research groups and the promotion of greater economic cooperation between countries in the north and south.
2025-12-04
Ryan Thorneycroft
This text responds to Watermeyer and Harvey’s (2025) article ‘Screwing with our Embodiment: A Response to Thorneycroft’s Re-Imagining of the Social Model’. In their article, they trouble an article that explored the impairment-disability distinction central to the social model of disability. They contend that my linguistic/discursive theorisation of impaired/disabled construction contributes to a ‘disappearing’ or ‘vanishing’ body that fails to grapple with its materiality. In response, they turn to phenomenology and critical realism to illustrate a material body that cannot be denied. My response is that such arguments rest on particular meanings associated with construction, performativity, and discourse that this article seeks to further clarify. Moreover, my text was not intended to dispute the materiality of the impaired/disabled body but to show how that body appears at all. Phenomenology and critical realism may be important for grappling with disabled embodiment, but it would be inapposite to invoke ‘somatophobia’ for those who pursue alternative theoretical trajectories.
2025-11-27
Tsega Hagos Mirach, Rosemary M. Lysaght, Molalign Belay Adugna, Abebe Assefa Alemu, Meseret Hassen Ayele, Sewbesew Yitayih Tilahun, Tewelde Gebremariam Adhanom, Abayneh Gujo Desta
Background: In Ethiopia, people with disabilities (PwDs) face significant marginalization and barriers to employment, despite a legislative framework intended to guarantee their rights. A critical knowledge gap exists regarding the implementation of these policies and the lived experiences of highly educated PwD navigating the transition to work. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted in 2021 with 784 university graduates with mobility and/or sensory impairments employed in the public sector. Data on socio-demographics, educational and employment histories, access to workplace accommodations, and perceptions of disability policies were collected via semi-structured questionnaires. Results: Findings reveal a notable gap between policy intent and actual implementation. While participants held generally positive views of disability-related laws, over 60% reported significant frustration during their job search, citing discriminatory vacancy announcements and inaccessible application processes as key barriers. Although higher educational attainment was significantly associated with increased access to workplace accommodations, these provisions remained overwhelmingly insufficient. Critical accommodations like accessible transportation, physical modifications to the work environment, and adaptive equipment were identified as unmet needs by a large majority (68–85%) of respondents. Conclusion: The study concludes that existing laws in Ethiopia have limited translation into equitable employment outcomes for graduates with disabilities. Systemic barriers to PwDs were identified, and these barriers were reported to perpetuate exclusion. Meaningful inclusion demands stricter enforcement of existing laws, deliberate efforts to eliminate attitudinal and environmental barriers, and a firm commitment to guaranteeing workplace accommodations as rights rather than privileges.
2025-10-29
Femke Bannink Mbazzi, Rehema Namaganda, Jane Nansamba, Agnes Ssali, Slivesteri Sande, Elizabeth Shalom Kawesa, Andrew Sentoogo Ssemata, Herbert Muyinda
Young persons with disability are often excluded from research, especially in low-income countries. In this study, we evaluated a one-year Disability Inclusive Youth (DIY) training and mentoring programme to build research capacity among Ugandan youths with and without disability. Fourteen youths (seven with a disability and seven peers) received a two-week training course in disability studies and research methods followed by a two-month internship. After completing the internship, they engaged in a nine-month research programme in which they collected and analysed life history data with other youths and co-created a film about their experiences in the programme. We evaluated reactions, learning, behavioural changes and the results of the training programme. Evaluation findings showed that the programme enhanced participants’ research skills, confidence and understanding of disability while fostering advocacy and peer support. Challenges included accessibility and sustained mentorship, although overall trainees and mentors reported improved disability inclusion in their research institution. Most participants secured employment post-programme. The DIY programme is a co-designed capacity-building approach with the potential for scale-up.
2025-10-27
Brian Watermeyer, Clare Harvey
This paper presents a response to Thorneycroft’s (2024) proposed conceptual solution to the disability-impairment binary at the heart of the social model of disability, also published in this journal. Since the binary is based on the now discredited sex-gender distinction, it is ever more unsustainable, leading Thorneycroft (2024) to suggest ‘screwing’ the social model by collapsing disability with impairment, recognizing that there is, putatively, no body-mind experience which is not discursively produced. As disabled people ourselves, we differ with Thorneycroft (2024) both on theoretical and phenomenological grounds, arguing that this approach constricts the already limited space available in social model discourse (and disability studies broadly) for an engagement with embodiment. Using experiential narratives from our own lives, we argue in support of a combination of critical realism and phenomenological disability studies, to create a firm conceptual space for the embodied self.
2025-10-14
Kristofer Hansson
This study uses a critical disability perspective to investigate how individuals with disabilities encounter and navigate uncertainties within the Swedish healthcare system. Previous research shows that healthcare professionals often lack specific knowledge about life with disabilities, leading to medical paternalism and the objectification of patients. To contribute to the body of knowledge, I apply a sociomaterial perspective, which understands these barriers as interwoven material and immaterial entities. By analyzing interviews with 15 individuals with disabilities, the significance of both material and immaterial aspects in shaping healthcare accessibility is highlighted. The interviews reveal that healthcare interactions often involve navigating various barriers, which can lead to significant health inequalities. The barriers are not isolated but interconnected, creating a complex landscape of inaccessibility, with the understanding that a more inclusive healthcare environment requires both structural changes and increased awareness among healthcare professionals about the specific needs of individuals with disabilities.
2025-10-09
Agota Giedrė Raišienė, Violeta Rapuano, Justina Budreikaitė
This paper examines the social inclusion of employees with disabilities through the interplay between inclusive leadership (IL) and work mattering (WM). Grounded in the social model of disability (Oliver 1990), the study adopts a systemic organizational view, emphasizing the role of leadership and workplace practices in shaping inclusion. It aimed to investigate the effect of demographic variables on respondents’ perceptions of IL and employee mattering. The data were collected from a sample of employees with disabilities (N = 239) through a survey conducted in Lithuania. To analyze the data, the Mann-Whitney U test, the Kruskal-Wallis test with Bonferroni correction, and regression analysis were employed. The results revealed a non-homogeneous distribution of employee mattering based on respondents’ gender, age, tenure, and position. Furthermore, the findings confirmed that IL behaviors increase perceptions of WM, and conversely, higher levels of WM increase perceptions of IL.
2025-09-21
Daniel Blackie, Jenni Kuuliala, Riikka Miettinen, Godelinde Gertrude Perk
This article advocates for two things: first, that religion be a central focus of disability studies, and second, that the study of disability history pay greater attention to the role of lived religion. It highlights how disability—understood as a culturally shaped form of difference—and lived religion—the everyday practice of belief—intersect as embodied experiences. Although scholars have explored how lived religion shapes gender and social status in (pre)modernity and how disability appears in medieval charity and hagiography, the relationship between early modern and nineteenth-century disability and religion remains understudied. Using fifteenth- and nineteenth-century European case studies, this article demonstrates how approaching disability history through lived religion reveals shifting margins and the meaning-making resources available to disabled people. This approach offers a richer, more nuanced understanding of their experiences and social roles in historical contexts.
2025-06-09
Stina Melander, Julia Bahner
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Swedish Covid Association (SCA) was established to represent individuals with Long COVID (LC). The unique Swedish response to the pandemic, characterized by minimal restrictions, serves as the backdrop for the SCA’s efforts to highlight the specific needs of LC patients, who were largely excluded from pandemic policies and protective measures. Utilizing the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF), this study examines how the SCA advocates for LC patients across micro, meso, and macro levels. Data were collected through analysis of the SCA’s online materials, reports, and interviews with former SCA representatives. The SCA’s narrative positions LC patients as deserving heroes, emphasizing their previous ‘productive’ lives and their entitlement to appropriate healthcare. While this strategy empowers individuals, the focus on the ‘worthy’ patient risks reinforcing ableist standards. Consequently, activists should be cognizant of the potential for their advocacy strategies to inadvertently perpetuate ableist narratives.