For Disability History Month 2019 the College of Arts and Law Inclusivity Projects asked ‘what do you wish people knew about disability?’. We had some very poignant and thought-provoking responses.

This year we are extended this question and joined it up with our Pride Not Prejudice initiative.

We invited those who live with a disability (whether their own or someone they live with or care for) to share their thoughts on the above question. This was an opportunity to share experiences (either personal of from literature) in order to deepen our understanding of, and give a platform to the voices of, those living with a disability.

With special thanks to our speakers; Andy Irwin, Antonia Parker Smith, Beth O’Brien, Charlotte Minter, Helen Murray, Imogen Mann, Israel Kiggundu-Tamale, Jo Duberley, Liana Turner, Pete Collins and Tara Sutton, as well as those who chose to submit responses anonymously.

Recommended Resources

Dyslexia and other learning differences

Advice and support available for students with Dyslexia and other learning differences.

Academic Advice

Dr Hannah Cornwell and colleagues have provided a list of useful resources, and in the video below, discuss their experiences with dyslexia in higher education.

Books and Film

Disability Visibility, Book by Alice Wong

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According to the last census, one in five people in the United States lives with a disability. Some are visible, some are hidden-but all are underrepresented in media and popular culture. Now, just in time for the thirtieth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, activist Alice Wong brings together an urgent, galvanizing collection of personal essays by contemporary disabled writers. There is Harriet McBryde Johnson's "Unspeakable Conversations," which describes her famous debate with Princeton philosopher Peter Singer over her own personhood. There is columnist s. e. smith's celebratory review of a work of theatre by disabled performers. There are original pieces by up-and-coming authors like Keah Brown and Haben Girma. There are blog posts, manifestos, eulogies, and testimonies to Congress. Taken together, this anthology gives a glimpse of the vast richness and complexity of the disabled experience, highlighting the passions, talents, and everyday lives of this community. It invites readers to question their own assumptions and understandings. It celebrates and documents disability culture in the now. It looks to the future and past with hope and love.

Crippled: Austerity and the Demonization of Disabled People, Book by Frances Ryan

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The austerity crisis and threat to disability rights. New updated edition includes the impact of COVID on Britain’s 14 million disabled people.

In austerity Britain, disabled people have been recast as worthless scroungers. From social care to the benefits system, politicians and the media alike have made the case that Britain’s 12 million disabled people are nothing but a drain on the public purse. Fully updated to include the coronavirus crisis, Crippled tells the stories of those most affected by this devastating regime. It is at once both a damning indictment of a safety net so compromised it strangles many of those it catches and a passionate demand for an end to austerity, which hits hardest those most in need.

It's Not OK to Feel Blue (and other lies): Inspirational people open up about their mental health - And Other Lies, Book by Scarlett Curtis

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Following from the massive success of Feminists Don’t Wear Pink (and Other Lies), Scarlett Curtis brings together more high profile figures to talk about their experiences of mental health and the stigma surrounding the issue. Outspoken, provocative and impassioned, It’s Not Ok to Feel Blue is a blistering collection that seeks to shed light on a hugely important topic.

I, Daniel Blake, Film by Ken Loach

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Daniel Blake (Dave Johns) is a 59-year-old widowed carpenter who must rely on welfare after a recent heart attack leaves him unable to work. Despite his doctor's diagnosis, British authorities deny Blake's benefits and tell him to return to his job. As Daniel navigates his way through an agonizing appeal process, he begins to develop a strong bond with a destitute, single mother (Hayley Squires) who's struggling to take care of her two children.

Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's, Book by John Elder Robison

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From the time he was three or four years old, John Elder Robison realised that he was different from other people. He was unable to make eye contact or connect with other children, and by the time he was a teenager his odd habits - an inclination to blurt out non-sequiturs, obsessively dismantle radios or dig five-foot holes (and stick his younger brother in them) - had earned him the label 'social deviant'. It didn't help that his mother conversed with light fixtures and his father spent evenings pickling himself in sherry.

Look Me in the Eye is his story of growing up with Asperger's syndrome - a form of autism - at a time when the diagnosis simply didn't exist. Along the way it also tells the story of two brothers born eight years apart yet devoted to each other: the author and his younger brother Chris, who would grow up to become bestselling author Augusten Burroughs.

This book is a rare fusion of inspiration, dark comedy and insight into the workings of the human mind. For someone who has struggled all his life to connect with other people, Robison proves to be an extraordinary storyteller.

A Body, Undone: Living On After Great Pain, Book by Christina Crosby

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In the early evening on October 1, 2003, Christina Crosby was three miles into a seventeen mile bicycle ride, intent on reaching her goal of 1,000 miles for the riding season. She was a respected senior professor of English who had celebrated her fiftieth birthday a month before. As she crested a hill, she caught a branch in the spokes of her bicycle, which instantly pitched her to the pavement. Her chin took the full force of the blow, and her head snapped back. In that instant, she was paralyzed.

In A Body, Undone, Crosby puts into words a broken body that seems beyond the reach of language and understanding. She writes about a body shot through with neurological pain, disoriented in time and space, incapacitated by paralysis and deadened sensation. To address this foreign body, she calls upon the readerly pleasures of narrative, critical feminist and queer thinking, and the concentrated language of lyric poetry. Working with these resources, she recalls her 1950s tomboy ways in small-town, rural Pennsylvania, and records growing into the 1970s through radical feminism and the affirmations of gay liberation.