Major Research Papers - Critical Disability Studies

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Ableism, Intersectionality, Power and Knowledge: The Complexities of Navigating Accommodations in Postsecondary Institutions
(2020-10-27) Brown, Zahra J.; Gorman, Rachel; Isrealite, Neita
Although post-secondary educational institutions have been mandated by law to accommodate, the issue of students with disabilities receiving accommodation remains problematic. One factor that is relevant, but often overlooked, is how power functions in the process of seeking and receiving accommodation. My interest is to critically examine selected parts of my lived experiences with accommodation at three post-secondary institutions to shed light upon how power, knowledge and intersectionality function for students seeking and receiving accommodation. I argue that a successful navigation of accommodation at postsecondary institutions does not depend only on the institution’s duty to accommodate but also on these factors. My literature review employs constructs proposed by several scholars to explain the complexities of accommodation. These include: 1) Kimberlé Crenshaw’s Black Feminist conceptualization of intersectionality and the need for a multiple axis framework to understand the dilemma that Black women present, 2) Patricia Hill Collins’ Black Feminist Thought and its emphasis on categories of analyses that address unequal power relationships between parties, 3) Richard Clark Eckert and Amy June Rowley’s notion of audism as embodying supremacy, 4) Michel Foucault’s articulation of discourse analyses of knowledge and power, and 5) Teri Hibbs and Dianne Pothier’s analysis of how power functions in the accommodation process. I apply these notions to an auto-ethnographic case study of my own experiences in postsecondary institutions as black, woman and student with disabilities. The results of my analysis as well as my recommendations will advance scholarship in the area of accommodation and disabilities.
Open Access
Accessible Tourism in Nepal: Deconstructing Space and the Meaning of Risk
(2018-01-30) McIntyre, Emily; Rioux, Marcia; Treviranus, Jutta
The following research paper explores the intersections among inclusive design, critical disability theory, constructions of risk, and accessible tourism in Nepal. The research applies disability theories and rights to tourism to highlight how spaces are disabling and contextualizes attitudinal barriers to accessible tourism. It also aims to better understand how risk is perceived for people with disabilities in Nepal. The literature review provides a context specific to Nepal and its tourism industry and environment. A qualitative analysis was undertaken through fieldwork and observation in Nepal, including interviews of 10 service providers in the tourism industry, non-governmental organizations (NGO), and disabled people’s organizations (DPO). The findings suggest that spaces were either inaccessible or inequitably available to not only people with disabilities, but also other minority groups such as women or individuals from a certain caste. Service providers in this study not only had a willingness but also a passion to become more inclusive. However, they felt that structural barriers and a general lack of awareness about disability rights hindered accessible services. The findings show the ways in which creative workarounds and experimentation can be used to navigate understanding inclusive tourism and how co-communication can be a tool for inclusivity in both sensitivity training and cross-cultural training. This study suggests future areas of research including better understanding tourists with disabilities experiences in Nepal, researching employment numbers of individuals from different minority groups, and reporting on the technical nuances of space. It also aims to present recommendations that could be implemented to help mitigate barriers to service provision. It presents ways to re-think space, inclusivity in that space, and deconstructs social perceptions on risk, tourism participation and employment for people with disabilities.
Open Access
Accessorizing Accessibility: Flexible Tools For Your Everyday
(2017-04-10) Ferreirinha, Jason; Halifax, Nancy; Baljko, Melanie
Discussions with friends and other allies in the disability community lead to the discovery of barriers related to one of the modern symbols of accessibility, the Electronic Door Opener (EDO). As such my research became concerned with physical accessibility to and through the built environment. To develop a greater understanding of the concern this project initiated a thorough audit of EDOs by reviewing their functionality in the built environment with respect to peoples’ bodies. Round table discussions between community members (who identified as being a part of, or allied with the disability community) revealed a range of concerns regarding EDO remotes. Major concerns included how the remote would affect privacy, social stigma, personal security and the risk for abuse. Despite some differences, the discussion satisfied most group concerns and showed strong evidence that the concept could improve environmental access.
Open Access
Autism And Its Associated Symbols
(2017-04-27) Weaver, Courtney; Halifax, Nancy; Rioux, Marcia
This paper aims to explore four symbols associated with autism: the puzzle piece, umbrella, jigsaw puzzle ribbon, and the three coloured rainbow. Western secular societal assumptions regarding autism will be analysed in each symbol. This will be accomplished via a semiological critical visual methodology that will involve taking into account each symbol’s site of creation, the materials used, their surrounding socio-historical discourses, and their colours and shapes. Given that there is currently an Autism Awareness Month and Day in which one or more of these symbols are present, it is important to understand what is being conveyed about autism to national and international audiences. This paper will ultimately reveal that there needs to be more consistent clarification of symbol meanings, especially in regards to colours, and that commendatory alternate symbols can be associated with autism for the future.
Open Access
Awakening Hope: A Critical Analysis of the Stigmatization of Children with Disabilities in Nigerian Families and Communities
(2016-06-16) Imade, Victor; Gorman, Rachel; Reaume, Geoffrey
This Major Research Paper (MRP) in York University’s graduate program in Critical Disability Studies (CDS) explores the stigmatization and marginalization imposed on Nigerian-Canadian children living in Canada. Canada has attempted to recognize the rights of people with disabilities, but people with disabilities still face discrimination and substantive barriers. For many Nigerian families living in Canada, as with some other Canadian families, when a child is diagnosed as having a disability the entire family faces immediate stigmatization and rejection within the local community. This problem may be greater for Nigerian families living in Nigeria but this MRP focuses primarily on the issue within Canada’s borders. Aspects of this MRP are applicable to anyone living with a disability but it focuses primarily on Nigeria-Canadian children and families. Utilizing a multilayered methodological approach that is auto-ethnographic, historical and comparative, this MRP explores the disabling impacts of the stigmatization and marginalization that are imposed on Nigeria-Canadian children with disabilities living in Canada. The auto-ethnographic component of this MRP is based on a narrative of the author’s personal experiences of disability in order to expose a variety of barriers that impede the ability of people with disabilities to participate in an inclusive environment, institutions and communities. On the basis the author’s personal experience working with Nigerian families having children with disabilities, it is evident that some Nigerian immigrants bring attitudes of shame and rejection towards people with disabilities with them when they migrate to Canada. Nigerian families with disabled children also face disabling expressions of racism and exclusion in the Canadian educational, medical and immigration systems. After exploring the multiple factors causing isolation and rejection in the lives of Nigerian children with disabilities, this MRP suggests a number of strategies to foster inclusion and awaken hope in the lives of these children.
Open Access
‘Broken Trust’ –A critical policy analysis of the difficulties faced by disabled intergenerational families seeking education and accommodation
(2021-08-26) Lincoln, J N; da Silveira Gorman, Rachel; Parekh, Gillian
As a result of the presence of racialized, gendered, and socio-economic bias within educational policies intended to assist disabled individuals, many students and their families often encounter abusive and negative accommodation experiences. These failures are particularly damaging during the transition out of high school and even more so within post secondary institutions themselves.Employing the educational policy analysis model created by Diem, Young, Wilton, Mansfield, and Lee (2014) in their paper entitled “The intellectual landscape of critical policy analysis” this major research paper explores several policies which impact students during these transition periods and highlights the failures that they repeatedly encounter. The personal story of the author is also woven into the analysis to show that there is a human side of this experience which must be included to truly expose the brutal nature of these policy failures. It is shown throughout that even though policy is crafted with rhetoric that may seem beneficial to the disabled recipient, the intent is often one of control, suppression, and reinforcement of the aforementioned negative biases.
Open Access
"Can't Nobody Even Spread Their Wings Here": Thinking Disability Alongside Environmental Racism, Collectively Acquired Impairments, and Injustice in Flint, Michigan
(2019-08-14) Kovesi, Caroline; Scott, Dayna; Dryden, Jane
The unjust production of impairments has historically posed a theoretical and political problem for a Disability Studies committed to normalizing and de-stigmatizing disability. This discursive schism serves to reinforce the discipline’s tendency towards “epistemic whiteness” (Puar, 2017, p.xix). However, it is imperative that the field consider situated experiences of disability inextricably linked to contexts such as environmental racism currently invisibilized and/or overlooked in the field. The following paper attempts to address some of these gaps by studying the water crisis in Flint, Michigan that began in 2014 - and resulted in 30 000 children being exposed to lead poisoning, along with a Legionnaire’s Disease outbreak that killed twelve people - as a case study on collectively acquired impairments. How does the Flint water crisis challenge Disability Studies theory to better account for impairments acquired – or more accurately, imposed - through environmental racism? I pay particular attention to the phenomenology of living with collectively acquired impairments, and utilize the concepts of disorientation, disposability, and debility in my analysis to foreground the varied implications involved when already marginalized and racialized populations acquire impairments. Experiences of Flint residents call on the discipline of Disability Studies to pay greater attention to how situations of injustice affect embodiment in ways that may not neatly fit into the rubric of impairment.
Open Access
"Can't Nobody Even Spread Their Wings Here": Thinking Disability Alongside Environmental Racism, Collectively Acquired Impairments, and Injustice in Flint, Michigan
(2019-08-14) Kovesi, Caroline; Scott, Dayna; Dryden, Jane
Open Access
Care Work in the Camp: An Institutional Ethnography of Care Work in Developmental Services through a Critical Examination of the Problematizations in SIPDDA and QAM
(2020-08-24) Fernandes, Sabine A.; da Silveira Gorman, Rachel; Tam, Louise
In this Major Research Paper (MRP) I provide an institutional ethnography of care work in developmental services in Ontario through a critical examination of the Services and Supports to Promote the Social Inclusion of Persons with Developmental Disabilities Act (SIPDDA, 2008) and the Act’s Quality Assurance Measures regulation (QAM). In accessing ways of knowing produced by Black and Indigenous history, critical race/ disability/ queer theory, political philosophy and economy, Black and brown anarchist and abolitionist knowledge, Afrofuturism, and autoethnographic narrative, this work is my attempt to affirm the tidal wave of collective rage, grief, resilience, and hope I am swept up in, crashing against the brittle, unimaginative, violent, and deadly landscapes of white supremacy. I use Carol Bacchi’s “What’s the Problem Represented to be?” (WPR) approach (Bacchi, 2012) as the outline for this MRP. The application of WPR is grounded in the understanding that the ways in which problems are identified reveal specific biases, shaping how we know ourselves and others (Bacchi, 2012). I engage Agamben’s (1998) theory of bare life in conjunction with WPR, to locate carceral sites and categories of political life in the settler state. In my subversion of the epistemological foundations of SIPDDA and QAM – white supremacist, cisheteropatriarchal, eugenic, and ableist ways of knowing – I advocate Fritsch’s (2010) envisioning of intercorporeality as a process of abolishing the carceral conditions of care work and caring with people labelled with developmental disabilities.
Open Access
Care Work in the Camp: An Institutional Ethnography of Care Work in Developmental Services Through a Critical Examination of the Problematizations in SIPDDA and QAM
(2020-08) Fernandes, Sabine; da Silveira Gorman, Rachel; Tam, Louise
In this Major Research Paper (MRP) I provide an institutional ethnography of care work in developmental services in Ontario through a critical examinationof the Services and Supports to Promote the Social Inclusion of Persons with Developmental Disabilities Act (SIPDDA, 2008) and the Act’s Quality Assurance Measures regulation (QAM). In accessing ways of knowing produced by Black and Indigenous history, critical race/ disability/ queer theory, political philosophy and economy, Black and brown anarchist and abolitionist knowledge, Afrofuturism, and autoethnographic narrative, this work is my attempt to affirm the tidal wave of collective rage, grief, resilience, and hope I am swept up in, crashing against the brittle, unimaginative, violent, and deadly landscapes of white supremacy. I use Carol Bacchi’s “What’s the Problem Represented to be?” (WPR) approach (Bacchi, 2012) as the outline for this MRP. The application of WPR is grounded in the understanding that the ways in which problems are identified reveal specific biases, shaping how we know ourselves and others (Bacchi, 2012). I engage Agamben’s (1998) theory of bare lifein conjunction with WPR, to locate carceral sites and categories of political life in the settler state. In my subversion of the epistemological foundations of SIPDDA and QAM –white supremacist, cisheteropatriarchal,eugenic,and ableist ways of knowing–I advocate Fritsch’s (2010) envisioning of intercorporealityas a process of abolishing the carceral conditions of care work and caring with people labelled with developmental disabilities.
Open Access
"The Carpet Felt Five Inches Thick!" A Socio-Spatial Analysis of the Judge Rotenberg Center
(2019-05-23) Shields, Raya; viva davis halifax, nancy; Reaume, Geoffrey
Referencing Foucault, Goffman, and the lived experiences and testimony of survivors of the Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC), Canton Massachusetts, read alongside the writing of geographers, architects and sociologists exploring the design and space of theme parks and institutions, my research will explore the ways in which institutions and theme parks utilize similar methods to control the experience of those within in their manipulation of space, to (re)direct bodies. My MRP seeks to examine the juxtaposition between the abusive practices and the bizarre Disney-esque design of the space of the JRC, which bears many of the hallmarks of the theme park. Referencing the history and functions of the theme park, I read alongside the history and functions of institutions for those labelled with autism and intellectual disabilities through the case study of the JRC, I draw upon Sara Ahmed (2006) to ask what it means to be oriented (spatially, psychically, bodily, and temporally) in institutional spaces. I use Ahmed’s (2006) Queer Phenomenology to explore the ways in which autistic bodies are (re)(dis)oriented by the fantastical space of the JRC.
Open Access
Coda/Hearing/Deaf: Telling Stories in the Borderlands
(2017-10-20) Johnson, Sammy Jo; viva davis halifax, nancy; Snodden, Kristin
This is a project centered on stories and storytelling. Here I tell several small stories, including stories about telling stories. None of the narratives are separate from the others, each one is connected to the last as part of a larger story. This larger story is my story as a Child of Deaf Adults (Coda). It is a Coda story set someplace between compulsory able-bodiedness and desiring deafness. In this process I hope to uncover and challenge parts of my Coda story and versions of myself I have been questioning for years. This journey has raised many questions but at its heart lies one central question: what is it that makes me hearing?
Open Access
The Creation of Barriers and Isolation for Seniors Through the Increased Societal Dependence of Technology During the COVID-19 Pandemic
(2021-09-28) Li, Jessica; Raume, Geoffrey; Ahmad, Farah
Research done in the past on senior technology and of the newer research done on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic provides deeper insights into the functional, structural, interpersonal, and intrapersonal barriers that seniors face when dealing with technology. Not only have devices and platforms not been made user-friendly for seniors with age-related declines, but the continuous attempts to push seniors intousingthe newest technologies have only built-up fear, anxiety and negative attitudes in seniors. Both society and seniors themselves need to address the ageist assumptions that they have about the limitations and behaviours associated with old age. The results and suggestions from this research will further advance the pre-existing research and add a relevant COVID-19 lens. Hopefully, it will also advance the field of critical disability scholarship and draw more attention to the discrimination seniors face because of their age.
Open Access
Disability, Citizenship, and Higher Education: Humber College's Community Integration Through Co-Operative Education Program
(2016-08-25) Macri, Susan Elizabeth; Gorman, Rachel; Reaume, Geoffrey
Individuals labelled with intellectual and developmental disabilities encounter a severe lack of choice when it comes to deciding what they will pursue once they are ready to exit high school. For those individuals that are interested in continuing their studies at the post-secondary level, the options are limited or non-existent depending on their perceived disability and/or impairment. In the province of Ontario, the Community Integration through Co-operative Education (CICE) program is one viable possibility for individuals labelled with intellectual and developmental disabilities that are able to meet the program admissions standards. Using a Critical Disability Studies analysis, this paper questions if inclusive higher education can exist within current neoliberal structures. This paper also aims to contextualize how having barrier-free access to post-secondary programs (like the CICE program) impacts substantive citizenship for individuals labelled with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Open Access
Disabling Access: Barriers to Eye Gaze Technology for Students with Disabilities
(2020-08-12) Sam, Alexander; Parekh, Gillian; da Silveira Gorman, Rachel
The MRP concludes that scientific and biomedical models of disability have historically shaped government policy responses to disability and continue to do so today. Canadian policy and programs meant to facilitate access to Eye Gaze technology are guided by scientific understandings of disability, which embed systematic, procedural and training barriers into policy programs that are supposed to provide funding support to overcome financial barriers. A list of 10 classroom recommendations for barrier free access to Eye Gaze technology is presented using the social model approach, to help parents, educators and support workers identify and eliminate obstacles for users. The MRP ends with a call for further discussion and scholarship of Eye Gaze technology in classrooms, which provides readers with 6 recommended areas of Eye Gaze technology research.
Open Access
Disabling Accessing: Barriers to Eye Gaze Technology for Students with Disabilities
(2020-08) Sam, Alexander; Parekh, Gillian; da Silveira Gorman, Rachel
This MRP is intended as a resource for parents, educators and support workers to identify systematic, financial, and training barriers for students. The research takes readers through Federal (i.e. Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms) and provincial legislation (i.e. Education Act [1990], Ontario Human Rights Code, Accessibility for Ontarians with Disability Act [2005]), disability support programs (i.e. ADP and SEA), as well as education policy (i.e. TDSB Accessibility Policy P069, TDSB Equity Policy P037, TDSB Special Education Plan [2017]) to highlight the government policy responses to disability in Canada and outlines how access to Eye Gaze technology encounters numerous barriers. The goal is to demonstrate the need for critical discourse focusing on the connection between historical discrimination and biases embedded in Canadian policy,and their role in perpetuating barriers to accessing assistive technology for students with disabilities. The Toronto District School Board is used as the setting, while Tobii Dynavox is the Eye Gaze technology vendor under review for analyzing how policy, programs and institutional practices enable or disable access for prospective students.Theoretical DiscussionAn analysis of the scientific (i.e. Biomedical, Functional) and social models of disability (i.e. Environmental, Human Rights) is used to illustrate how each perspective shapes understandings of disability differently, then moves to examining the dominant disability perspective guiding legislation, policy and programs affecting persons with disabilities in Canada. Both a human rights approach todisability and critical policy frameworks are used to analyze the context within which social and education policies are entrenched and administered in Canadian society, contributing to systematic, financial, procedural, and training barriers to accessingEye Gaze technology. ConclusionThe MRP concludes that scientific and biomedical models of disability have historically shaped government policy responses to disability and continue to do so today. Canadian policy and programs meant to facilitate access to Eye Gaze technology are guided by scientific understandings of disability, which embed systematic, proceduraland training barriers into policy programs that are supposed to provide funding support to overcome financial barriers. A list of 10 classroom recommendations for barrier free access to Eye Gaze technology is presented using the social model approach, to help parents, educators and support workers identify and eliminate obstacles for users. The MRP ends with a call for further discussion and scholarship of Eye Gaze technology in classrooms, which provides readers with 6 recommended areas of Eye Gaze technology research.
Open Access
The Disabling Impact of Female Genital Mutilation: An Auto-Ethnographic Study of One Woman's Experience of FGM
(2017-03-29) Adodo, Faith; Gorman, Rachel; Reaume, Geoffrey
Drawing upon the author’s personal experience of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM), this MRP examines the powerlessness and lack of agency of females who are subjected to this disabling practice. This research project explains the many negative health, emotional and psychological consequences of FGM and describes the difficult task of erasing the deep scars caused by the practice. A major aspect of this MRP is an attempt to draw linkages between the personal impacts of FGM and the social, cultural and religious factors contributing to the perpetuation of the practice in some countries. There is a particular focus on African countries and especially Nigeria. The primary aim of this research project is to demonstrate the need for critical discourses around the disabling impacts of FGM and to promote the implementation of progressive laws and policies that respect the rights of girls and women to control their own bodies. Entrenched patriarchal traditions and religious beliefs uphold FGM, and this MRP discusses the stigmatization, marginalization and barriers imposed on women who refuse to submit to bodily mutilation as a rite of passage to womanhood. The study’s auto-ethnographic research methodology facilitates exploration of the disabling consequences of FGM in areas such as intimacy, marriage, parenting and family life. In order to provide historical context, this auto-ethnographic methodology is supplemented by analysis of the social and historical origins of FGM. Recognizing the intersecting factors that support FGM, the study pays particular attention to the ways in which religion, race and gender combine to marginalize and silence many women in their religious communities. Overall, this research project seeks to explain the historical origins of the practice of FGM, its ongoing disabling impacts on girls and women in some societies, and the need for transformed gender norms that empower the voices and support the self-determination rights of girls and women in deeply patriarchal countries such as Nigerian.
Open Access
Disrupting the Status Quo: Basic Income for People with Disabilities
(2018-10-15) Creighton, Alexandra; Rioux, Marcia; Sheldon, Tess
This paper explores how a basic income (BI) program for people with disabilities could affirm the ideals outlined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Ontario Human Rights Code and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. ABI can provide its recipients with an increased level of human dignity, autonomy and inclusion when compared with the current model of social assistance in Ontario. Theories of equality and social justice will be explored to demonstrate the ways in which a BI could provide greater well-being for people with disabilities. A range of judicial decisions will be reviewed. The opinions expressed in these selected court cases bolster the establishment of a BI program in Ontario. Expert testimony and dissenting opinions show that the Charter may obligate a ‘duty to act’ to promote a basic standard of living which a BI could provide for people with disabilities.
Open Access
Embracing Ambiguity: Moving Toward Madness and Death in Performance
(2020-08-24) Sabada, SK; da Silveira Gorman, Rachel; Mitchell, Allyson
This MRP comprises two inter-related papers examining the intimacies of death and dying and their relationship to madness through performance. The first paper focuses on the use of alternate reality games (ARGs) as a medium of performance. In particular, through the exploration of my own ARG, I discuss the possibilities ARGs have for madness and death. I suggest that this format, unlike other mediums, has distinct features that would benefit mad and disabled artists in their explorations of madness and disability. Through the articulation of the intimacies of death and dying and the abject, this paper also seeks to explore the further significance of their conceptual applications in discussions pertaining to mad subjectivity. The second paper seeks to examine the complex relationships between death, madness and performance through the invocation of the Intimacies of Death and Dying and the theatrical use of the Abject. This paper asks: What is it about the act of being alive, that qualifies us for being embodied subjects? Further, what does it mean for those of us whose embodiments are conditional? Through navigating these relationships, this paper tentatively examines what exploring these relationships might mean for mad subjectivities and dead embodiments in the context of performance.
Open Access
Embracing Ambiguity: Moving Toward Madness and Death in Performance
(2020-08) Sabada, SK; da Silveira Gorman, Rachel; Mitchell, Allyson
This MRP comprises two inter-related papers examining the intimacies of death and dying and their relationship to madness through performance.The first paper focuses on the use of alternate reality games (ARGs) as a medium of performance. In particular, through the exploration of my own ARG, I discuss the possibilities ARGs have for madness and death.I suggest that this format, unlike other mediums, has distinct features that would benefit mad and disabled artists intheir explorations of madness and disability. Through the articulation of the intimacies of death and dying and the abject, this paper also seeks to explore the further significance of their conceptual applications in discussions pertaining to mad subjectivity. The secondpaper seeks to examine the complex relationships between death, madness and performance through the invocation of the Intimacies of Death and Dying and the theatrical use of the Abject. This paper asks: What is it about the act of being alive, that qualifies us for being embodied subjects? Further, what does it mean for those of us whose embodiments are conditional?Through navigating these relationships, this paper tentatively examines what exploring these relationships might mean for mad subjectivities and dead embodiments in the context of performance.