The response to our Call for Papers for this Special Issue was tremendous. It was international, activist focused, and scholarly, highlighting contemporary controversies and challenges for disabled people of all ages. The Executive Editorial Board has been privileged to review all submitted papers, resulting in a Special Issue that offers a wealth of ideas and insights, raising important questions for further exploration and discussion. Cross-cultural and interdisciplinary collaborations are explored, in keeping with the original aims of the journal: to prioritise the voices of disabled people.
Since the Call for Papers for the Special Issue went out, Covid-19 has intervened globally, disturbing all aspects of life. Disabled people have been particularly badly affected by changes in social conditions and relations of life. Drawing on a virtual ethnographic study of disability support networks in China using WeChat, Ruikai Dai and Luanjiao Hu have been able to explore the importance of inclusive communications to confront COVID-19 disruptions. They highlight self-determination, and self-help actions generated from within disability communities. All papers selected illustrate how societies’ conceptions of how disabled people express themselves fall short. Creative approaches to facilitating the expression of disabled people’s views are discussed, including ways of hearing from those who are seldom heard. In thoughtful and imaginative ways, coping strategies used by disabled people in Algeria during the COVID-19 pandemic are also explored by Amel Said Houari and Ghouti Hadjoui. They cover new ways in which interactions and encounters, in the context of pandemic emergency restrictions, can be challenged and changed.
One of the most exciting aspects of the Special Issue is its overarching analysis of the social construction of different experiences in disabled people’s lives. And contingent relations with socio-political and cultural context are noted. Monica Kaniamattam and Judith Oxley are interested in the support needs of mothers with disabled children in South India. Seray Ibrahim, Asimina Vasalou, Laura Benton & MichaSeray Ibrahim, Asimina Vasalou, Laura Benton & Michael Clarke are working in the UK to understand how new communication technologies can be meaningfully developed and deployed through the activities of practitioners and researchers – to raise children’s voices. Kathryn Locke, Leanne McRae, Gwyneth Peaty, Katie Ellis and Mike Kent are similarly concerned with the inclusion of disabled people in the development of new technological advancements in their study of the importance of smartphones for people in the Australian blind community.
The importance of an intersectionality lens for understanding disabled people’s experiences in relation to their identities, such as ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class or religion, is taken up in research carried out by Steven David Emery and Sanchayeeta Iyer with two deaf migrants. Syreeta Nolan’s personal account of what she calls ‘the compounded burden of being a black and disabled student during the age of COVID-19’ raises a series of further questions illuminated by understanding the power of intersectionality providing fresh insights that add to the significance of the Special Issue.
The paper written by Teresa Davies, Agnes Houston, Howard Gordon, Mhari McLintock, Wendy Mitchell, George Rook and Tom Shakespeare is co-produced by six people with dementia, supported by a UK academic with research expertise. They raise challenges to enable the potential contributions of people with dementia to be expressed in research, echoing the repeated call across the Special Issue to ensure that responses to challenges in disabled people’s lives are always empowering and inclusive, especially in challenging times.
The final article, by Simone Aspis, is passionately concerned with disabled people’s agency and activism as she contends that disabled people with learning difficulties are being prevented from leading campaigns, projects and initiatives. It is this theme of disabled people’s own agency in navigating contemporary controversies and challenges that ties the contributions to this Special Issue together. Collectively, the papers contradict assumptions that the voices of disabled people can’t be heard.
In this Special Issue readers will recognise the complexity of issues and questions requiring further investigation. This collection address contemporary concerns in disabled people’s lives for Disability & Society, the leading journal in Disability Studies. It will therefore be of importance in encouraging debate and dialogue over the fundamentally important controversies and challenges facing disabled people and society in years to come.
Disability & Society
Carol Thomas, Executive Editor, Emeritus Professor
University of Lancaster© 2022 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Grouphttps://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2022.2040196