Understanding disabling barriers: a fruitful partnership between Disability Studies and social practices?

Abstract

Disabled people are regularly denied their human rights, since policies and laws are hard to translate literally into practice. This article aims to make connections between social practice theories and Disability Studies, in order to understand the problems faced by disabled people, using different methods to look in detail at how practices are shaped and how disabled people get excluded. Disabled people are active agents in making change, both informally on an everyday basis and through formal actions. Thus we also suggest that the insights of disabled people could bring a fresh perspective to social practice theories, by troubling the taken-for-granted in our everyday lives.

Keywords:

• Social practice theory
• disability theories
• disabling barriers
• change
• co-production
• disabled students
• personal assistants

Acknowledgements

This article grew from our project ‘Getting Things Changed’, and many members of the wider team have also contributed to the writing. The authors would particularly like to acknowledge Joe Webb and Sandra Dowling for data collection and expert advice, along with Caroline Miles for her legal expertise. Finally, the authors are very grateful to all participants, but particularly to the co-research group formed of disabled students who carried out the Forum Theatre presentation.