Disability Policy & Accessibility
Welcome to our digital exhibit on Disability and Accessibility Policy. This page is a companion to the physical display in the Harvard Kennedy School Library, available through December 2024. Harvard affiliates can request books via HOLLIS, for pick-up at the library of your choice.
Since 1992, International Day of Persons with Disabilities (IDPD) has been observed annually on December 3 to "promote the rights and well-being of persons with disabilities at every level of society and development" (United Nations). In honor of IDPD, we've curated a selection of books and other resources on the relationship between disability, accessibility, policy, law, civil rights, and communities. The intersections of these topics speak to important questions about how governments worldwide are pursuing coordinated policy programs in service of community members with disabilities, who make up 15-20% of the global population.
Harvard Library Research Guides
- Book Display: Disability Pride Monthby Alessandra Seiter Last updated Dec 18, 2023
Harvard Initiatives
- PAE/SYPA Accessibility Canvas site (HarvardKey required) - All MPP and MPA/ID students are required to submit accessible copies of their PAE/SYPA. This Canvas site, built by the HKS Library, is a comprehensive resource for meeting PAE/SYPA accessibility requirements.
- University Disability Resources - Harvard-wide office that "serves as a central resource for students, faculty, staff, and visitors on disability-related information, procedures and services for our community" and "provides expertise in the development, implementation, and acquisition for best and promising disability-related University practices."
- UDR also provides resources to Harvard employees for securing workplace accommodations.
- HKS Student Disability Accommodations (HarvardKey required).
- Digital Accessibility Services - Harvard-wide office that "supports the Harvard community in making sure that everyone has the opportunity to access the university’s knowledge, ideas, and resources."
- Planning Accessible In-Person Meetings and Events from University Disability Resources.
- Hosting Accessible Remote Meetings and Events from Harvard Digital Accessibility Services.
- Disability Law and Policy - HKS course taught by Michael Stein that explores "how States develop national level programming to include persons with disabilities across a variety of sectors including health, education, employment, community inclusion, and social welfare and development."
- Harvard Law School Project on Disability - initiative that "provides human rights training and education, facilitates the development of international law and policy, encourages inclusive development practices, shares technical assistance on strategic litigation, and stimulates new thinking about the abilities of persons with disabilities and their human rights."
- Disability Justice Caucus - HKS student organization that "exists to encourage engagement by students and faculty with disability and ableism as critical areas of public policy, and to help make HKS a better place for students with disabilities."
- HKS faculty research related to disability.
Book List
Click on the circular "i" icons to view book descriptions. Click on the Harvard shield icons to access eebooks (HarvardKey required).
Accessibility Denied: Understanding Inaccessibility and Everyday Resistance to Inclusion for Persons with Disabilities by This book explores the societal resistance to accessibility for persons with disabilities, and tries to set an example of how to study exclusion in a time when numerous policies promise inclusion. With 12 chapters organised in three parts, the book takes a comprehensive approach to accessibility, covering transport and communication, knowledge and education, law and organisation. Topics within a wide cross-disciplinary field are covered, including disability studies, social work, sociology, ethnology, social anthropology, and history. The main example is Sweden, with its implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities within the context of the Nordic welfare state. By identifying and discussing persistent social and cultural conditions as well as recurring situations and interactions that nurture resistance to advancing accessibility, despite various strong laws promoting it, the book's conclusions are widely transferable. It argues for the value of alternating between methods, theoretical perspectives, and datasets to explore how new arenas, resources and technologies cause new accessibility concerns -- and possibilities -- for persons living with impairments. We need to be able to follow actors closely to uncover how they feel, act, and argue, but also to connect to wider discursive and institutional patterns and systems. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of disability studies, social work, sociology, ethnology, social anthropology, political science, and organisation studies.
ISBN: 1003120458Publication Date: 2021Accessible America: A History of Disability and Design by A history of design that is often overlooked--until we need it Have you ever hit the big blue button to activate automatic doors? Have you ever used an ergonomic kitchen tool? Have you ever used curb cuts to roll a stroller across an intersection? If you have, then you've benefited from accessible design--design for people with physical, sensory, and cognitive disabilities. These ubiquitous touchstones of modern life were once anything but. Disability advocates fought tirelessly to ensure that the needs of people with disabilities became a standard part of public design thinking. That fight took many forms worldwide, but in the United States it became a civil rights issue; activists used design to make an argument about the place of people with disabilities in public life. In the aftermath of World War II, with injured veterans returning home and the polio epidemic reaching the Oval Office, the needs of people with disabilities came forcibly into the public eye as they never had before. The US became the first country to enact federal accessibility laws, beginning with the Architectural Barriers Act in 1968 and continuing through the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, bringing about a wholesale rethinking of our built environment. This progression wasn't straightforward or easy. Early legislation and design efforts were often haphazard or poorly implemented, with decidedly mixed results. Political resistance to accommodating the needs of people with disabilities was strong; so, too, was resistance among architectural and industrial designers, for whom accessible design wasn't "real" design. Bess Williamson provides an extraordinary look at everyday design, marrying accessibility with aesthetic, to provide an insight into a world in which we are all active participants, but often passive onlookers. Richly detailed, with stories of politics and innovation, Williamson's Accessible America takes us through this important history, showing how American ideas of individualism and rights came to shape the material world, often with unexpected consequences.
ISBN: 9781479894093Publication Date: 2019Capitalism and Disability by Spread out over many years and many different publications, the late author and activist Marta Russell wrote a number of groundbreaking and insightful essays on the nature of disability and oppression under capitalism. In this volume, Russell's various essays are brought together in one place in order to provide a useful and expansive resource to those interested in better understanding the ways in which the modern phenomenon of disability is shaped by capitalist economic and social relations. The essays range in analysis from the theoretical to the topical, including but not limited to: the emergence of disability as a "human category" rooted in the rise of industrial capitalism and the transformation of the conditions of work, family, and society corresponding thereto; a critique of the shortcomings of a purely "civil rights approach" to addressing the persistence of disability oppression in the economic sphere, with a particular focus on the legacy of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990; an examination of the changing position of disabled people within the overall system of capitalist production utilizing the Marxist economic concepts of the reserve army of the unemployed, the labor theory of value, and the exploitation of wage-labor; the effects of neoliberal capitalist policies on the living conditions and social position of disabled people as it pertains to welfare, income assistance, health care, and other social security programs; imperialism and war as a factor in the further oppression and immiseration of disabled people within the United States and globally; and the need to build unity against the divisive tendencies which hide the common economic interest shared between disabled people and the often highly-exploited direct care workers who provide services to the former.
ISBN: 9781608467198Publication Date: 2019The Changing Disability Policy System: Active Citizenship and Disability in Europe by Being an 'active citizen' involves exercising social rights and duties, enjoying choice and autonomy, and participating in political decision-making processes which are of importance for one's life. Amid the new challenges facing contemporary welfare states, debate over just how 'active' citizens can and ought to be has redoubled. Presenting research from the first major comparative and cross-national study of active citizenship and disability in Europe, this book analyses the consequences of ongoing changes in Europe - what opportunities do persons with disabilities have to exercise Active Citizenship? The Changing Disability Policy System: Active Citizenship and Disability in Europe Volume 1 approaches the conditions for Active Citizenship from a macro perspective in order to capture the impact of the overall disability policy system. This system takes diverse and changing forms in the nine European countries under study. Central to the analysis are issues of coherence and coordination between three subsystems of the disability policy system, and between levels of governance. This book identifies the implications and policy lessons of the findings for future disability policy in Europe and beyond. It will appeal to policymakers and policy officials, as well as to researchers and students of disability studies, comparative social policy, international disability law and qualitative research methods.
ISBN: 9781138652880Publication Date: 2017Civil Disabilities: Citizenship, Membership, and Belonging by An estimated one billion people around the globe live with a disability; this number grows exponentially when family members, friends, and care providers are included. Various countries and international organizations have attempted to guard against discrimination and secure basic human rights for those whose lives are affected by disability. Yet despite such attempts many disabled persons in the United States and throughout the world still face exclusion from full citizenship and membership in their respective societies. They are regularly denied employment, housing, health care, access to buildings, and the right to move freely in public spaces. At base, such discrimination reflects a tacit yet pervasive assumption that disabled persons do not belong in society. Civil Disabilities challenges such norms and practices, urging a reconceptualization of disability and citizenship to secure a rightful place for disabled persons in society. Essays from leading scholars in a diversity of fields offer critical perspectives on current citizenship studies, which still largely assume an ableist world. Placing historians in conversation with anthropologists, sociologists with literary critics, and musicologists with political scientists, this interdisciplinary volume presents a compelling case for reimagining citizenship that is more consistent, inclusive, and just, in both theory and practice. By placing disability front and center in academic and civic discourse, Civil Disabilities tests the very notion of citizenship and transforms our understanding of disability and belonging.
ISBN: 9780812246674Publication Date: 2015Disability, Gender and State Policy: Exploring Margins by Foregrounding disability from an anthropological perspective, this book contributes to the studies in marginalization and social inequalities in India. Tracing global debates on the definition of disability, rehabilitation, and policies, it focuses on a South Asian model of disability. Covering a wide range of issues from international and national contexts, the book critically examines the role of disability rights movements, as well as the regional policies and practices. Disability, Gender & State Policy explores the cultural perceptions of disability, the construction of gender and personhood in rural and urban contexts, and the issues in social support and care work. It also highlights the implications of globalization and psycho-social disabilities among poor urban women. The book analyzes disabled persons' access to resources like education and employment opportunities in diverse sectors, providing a comprehensive account of the disabled, embedded in India's communities, citizenry, and democracy.
ISBN: 9788131605875Publication Date: 2013Disability, Policy and Professional Practice by This is the first book on working with disabled people to take an aspirational, outcomes-focused approach to professional practice. It forms the first attempt to grapple with the massive legislative and policy shifts in the disability field in the last 15 years and provides an up-to-date, positive approach to professional practice, based on the social model of disability. Disability, Policy and Professional Practice translates both adult and childrens' disability legislation and policy guidance into positive, creative, enabling practice methods for professionals in social care, health, employment and independent living.
ISBN: 9786613811882Publication Date: 2011Disability and the Internet: Confronting a Digital Divide by From websites to mobile devices, cyberspace has revolutionized the lived experience of disability - frequently for better, but sometimes for worse. Paul Jaeger offers a sweeping examination of the complex and often contradictory relationships between people with disabilities and the Internet. Tracing the historical and legal evolution of the digital disability divide in the realms of education, work, social life, and culture, and also exploring avenues of policy reform and technology development, Jaeger connects individual experiences with the larger story of technology's promise and limitations for providing equal access online.
ISBN: 9781588268280Publication Date: 2011Disability Civil Rights Law and Policy by The book examines the basis of discrimination against people with disabilities, including the history of such discrimination and a review of studies that explore why people engage in this sort of discrimination. It examines the federal laws that culminated in the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The book describes the ADA's definition of disability, how it has been interpreted and studied, and then reviews the three major titles of the ADA, including a review of the remedies available for various ADA claims and the procedures required to pursue them.
ISBN: 0314145141Publication Date: 2004Disability in Practice: Attitudes, Policies, and Relationships by Everyone is disabled in some respect, at least in the sense that others can do things that we cannot. But significant limitations on pursuing major life activities due to severely limited eyesight, hearing, mobility, cognitive functioning and so on pose special problems that fortunately have been recognized (to some extent) in our public policies. Public policy is important, as are the deliberative frameworks that we use to justify them, and the essays in thesecond and third sections of this volume have significant implications for public policy and offer new proposals for justifying frameworks. Underlying public policies and their assessment, however, arethe attitudes, good and bad, that we bring to them, and our attitudes as well deeply affect our interpersonal relationships. The essays here, especially in the first section, reveal how complex and problematic our attitudes towards persons with disabilities are when we are in relationships with them as care-givers, friends, family members, or briefly encountered strangers. Among the special highlights of this volume are its focus on moral attitudes and relationships involving disabilities,its emphasis on the importance of respect for persons as a necessary complement to generosity and charity, and the need to reconsider traditional deliberative frameworks for assessing policies.
ISBN: 9780198812876Publication Date: 2018Disability Protests: Contentious Politics 1970-1999 by Part and parcel to the civil rights movements of the past thirty years has been a sustained, coordinated effort among disabled Americans to secure equal rights and equal access to that of non-disabled people. Beyond merely providing a history of this movement, Sharon Barnartt and Richard Scotch's Disability Protests: Contentious Politics, 1970-1999 offers an incisive, sociological analysis of thirty years of protests, organization, and legislative victories within the deaf and disabled populations. The authors begin with a thoughtful consideration of what constitutes'contentious'politics and what distinguishes a sustained social movement from isolated acts of protest. The numbers of disability rights protests are meticulously catalogued over the course of thirty years, revealing significant increases in both cross-disability actions as well as disability-specific actions. Political rancor within disability communities is addressed as well. Chapter four,'A Profile of Contentious Actions'confronts the thorny question of who is'deaf enough'or'disabled enough'to adequately represent their constituencies. Barnartt and Scotch conclude by giving special attention to the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, and the 1988 Deaf President Now protest, focusing on how these landmark events affected their proponents. Disability Protests offers an entirely original sociological perspective on the emerging movement for deaf and disability rights
ISBN: 1563681129Publication Date: 2001Disability Rights Law and Policy: International and National Perspectives by This volume describes the extraordinary success of the international political movement of people with disabilities to include disability as a human rights issue. The authors are renowned disability rights attorneys, university professors, and activists who practice, teach and work internationally.
ISBN: 1571052399Publication Date: 2002The Disability Rights Movement: From Charity to Confrontation by Doris Zames Fleischer and Frieda Zames expand their encyclopaedic history of the struggle for disability rights in the United States, to include the past ten years of disability rights activism. The book includes a new chapter on the evolving impact of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the continuing struggle for cross-disability civil and human rights, and the changing perceptions of disability. The authors provide a probing analysis of such topics as deinstitutionalization, housing, health care, assisted suicide, employment, education, new technologies, disabled veterans, and disability culture. Based on interviews with over one hundred activists, The Disability Rights Movement tells a complex and compelling story of an ongoing movement that seeks to create an equitable and diverse society, inclusive of people with disabilities.
ISBN: 9781439907436Publication Date: 2011Disabling Barriers: Social Movements, Disability History, and the Law by Disabling Barriers analyzes issues relating to disability at different moments in Canadian and American history. In this volume, legal scholars, historians, and disability-rights activists demonstrate that disabled people can change their social status by transforming the political and legal discourse surrounding disablement. Employing tools from the fields of law and history, this original contribution explores how disabled people have been portrayed and treated in a variety of contexts, including within the labour market, the workers' compensation system, the immigration process, and the legal system (both as litigants and as lawyers). It deepens our knowledge of the role of people with disabilities within social movements in disability history. The contributors encourage us to rethink our understanding of both the systemic barriers disabled people face and the capacity of disabled people to effect positive societal change.
ISBN: 9780774835237Publication Date: 2017Disabling Interpretations: The Americans with Disabilities Act in Federal Court by The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 was intended to send a clear message to society that discrimination on the basis of disability is unacceptable. As with most civil rights laws, the courts were given primary responsibility for implementing disability rights policy.Mezey argues that the act has not fulfilled its potential primarily because of the judiciary's "disabling interpretations" in adjudicating ADA claims. In the decade of litigation following the enactment of the ADA, judicial interpretation of the law has largely constricted the parameters of disability rights and excluded large numbers of claimants from the reach of the law. The Supreme Court has not interpreted the act broadly, as was intended by Congress, and this method of decision making was for the most part mirrored by the courts below. The high court's rulings to expand state sovereign immunity and insulate states from liability in damage suits has also caused claimants to become enmeshed in litigation and has encouraged defendants to challenge other laws affecting disability rights. Despite the law's strong civil rights rhetoric, disability rights remain an imperfectly realized goal.
ISBN: 9780822958796Publication Date: 2005Family Policy and Disability by This book explores the status and scope of family policies related to households of children with disabilities, providing an in-depth, evidence-based review of legal, programmatic issues. It includes a discussion of the gaps between family needs and contemporary family policies in the United States and European countries, as demonstrated in these households' surveys. In addition, the volume offers a comparative analysis of cash benefits, tax credits and deductions, and in-kind provisions between the United States and select European countries (UK, France, and Sweden). Most importantly, this book identifies and continues the discussion regarding the critical role of family-centered policies, as expressed in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), as well as the future of family policy toward families of children with disabilities at a time of economic crisis.
ISBN: 9781107049178Publication Date: 2015The Future of Disability in America by The future of disability in America will depend on how well the U.S. prepares for and manages the demographic, fiscal, and technological developments that will unfold during the next two to three decades. Building upon two prior studies from the Institute of Medicine (the 1991 Institute of Medicine's report Disability in America and the 1997 report Enabling America), The Future of Disability in America examines both progress and concerns about continuing barriers that limit the independence, productivity, and participation in community life of people with disabilities. This book offers a comprehensive look at a wide range of issues, including the prevalence of disability across the lifespan; disability trends the role of assistive technology; barriers posed by health care and other facilities with inaccessible buildings, equipment, and information formats; the needs of young people moving from pediatric to adult health care and of adults experiencing premature aging and secondary health problems; selected issues in health care financing (e.g., risk adjusting payments to health plans, coverage of assistive technology); and the organizing and financing of disability-related research. The Future of Disability in America is an assessment of both principles and scientific evidence for disability policies and services. This book's recommendations propose steps to eliminate barriers and strengthen the evidence base for future public and private actions to reduce the impact of disability on individuals, families, and society.
ISBN: 9780309104722Publication Date: 2007Land Use Law and Disability: Planning and Zoning for Accessible Communities by In Land Use Law and Disability, Robin Paul Malloy argues that our communities need better planning to be safely and easily navigated by people with mobility impairment and to facilitate intergenerational aging in place. To achieve this, communities will need to think of mobility impairment and inclusive design as land use and planning issues, in addition to understanding them as matters of civil and constitutional rights. Although much has been written about the rights of people with disabilities, little has been said about the interplay between disability and land use regulation. This book undertakes to explain mobility impairment, as one type of disability, in terms of planning and zoning. The goal is to advance our understanding of disability in terms of planning and zoning to facilitate cooperative engagement between disability rights advocates and land use professionals. This in turn should lead to improved community planning for accessibility and aging in place.
ISBN: 9780521193931Publication Date: 2014No Pity: People With Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement by Now available in paperback and the winner of numerous awards, this is the first popular history of the disability rights movement. Includes conversations with couragous people who fight for freedom of movement, meaningful employment, and a life of dignity and promise.
ISBN: 0812919645Publication Date: 1993No Right to Be Idle: The Invention of Disability, 1840s-1930s by During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Americans with all sorts of disabilities came to be labeled as "unproductive citizens." Before that, disabled people had contributed as they were able in homes, on farms, and in the wage labor market, reflecting the fact that Americans had long viewed productivity as a spectrum that varied by age, gender, and ability. But as Sarah F. Rose explains in No Right to Be Idle, a perfect storm of public policies, shifting family structures, and economic changes effectively barred workers with disabilities from mainstream workplaces and simultaneously cast disabled people as morally questionable dependents in need of permanent rehabilitation to achieve "self-care" and "self-support." By tracing the experiences of policymakers, employers, reformers, and disabled people caught up in this epochal transition, Rose masterfully integrates disability history and labor history. She shows how people with disabilities lost access to paid work and the status of "worker--a shift that relegated them and their families to poverty and second-class economic and social citizenship. This has vast consequences for debates about disability, work, poverty, and welfare in the century to come.
ISBN: 9781469630083Publication Date: 2017Out of the Horrors of War: Disability Politics in World War II America by From workplace accidents to polio epidemics and new waves of immigration to the returning veterans of World War II, the first half of the twentieth century brought the issue of disability--what it was, what it meant, and how to address it--into national focus. Out of the Horrors of War: Disability Politics in World War II America explores the history of disability activism, concentrating on the American Federation of the Physically Handicapped (AFPH), a national, cross-disability organization founded during World War II to address federal disability policy. Unlike earlier disability groups, which had been organized around specific disabilities or shared military experience, AFPH brought thousands of disabled citizens and veterans into the national political arena, demanding equal access to economic security and full citizenship. At its core, the AFPH legislative campaign pushed the federal government to move disabled citizens from the margins to the center of the welfare state. Through extensive archival research, Audra Jennings examines the history of AFPH and its enduring legacy in the disability rights movement. Counter to most narratives that place the inception of disability activism in the 1970s, Jennings argues that the disability rights movement is firmly rooted in the politics of World War II. In the years immediately following the war, leaders in AFPH worked with organized labor movements to advocate for an ambitious political agenda, including employer education campaigns, a federal pension program, improved access to healthcare and education, and an affirmative action program for disabled workers. Out of the Horrors of War extends the arc of the disability rights movement into the 1940s and traces how its terms of inclusion influenced the movement for decades after, leading up to the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.
ISBN: 9780812248517Publication Date: 2016The Oxford Handbook of Disability History by Disability history exists outside of the institutions, healers, and treatments it often brings to mind. It is a history where the disabled live not just as patients or cure-seekers, but rather as people living differently in the world - and it is also a history that helps define the fundamental concepts of identity, community, citizenship, and normality. The Oxford Handbook of Disability History is the first volume of its kind to represent this history and its global scale, from ancient Greece to British West Africa. The twenty-seven articles, written by thirty experts from across the field, capture the diversity and liveliness of this emerging scholarship. Whether discussing disability in modern Chinese cinema or on the American antebellum stage, this collection provides new and valuable insights into the rich and varied lives of the disabled across time and place.
ISBN: 9780190234959Publication Date: 2018The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Disability by The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Disability provides a timely and comprehensive overview of the wide range and depth of sociological theory and research on disability. Each section of the Handbook incorporates a uniquely sociological perspective, presented by a wide range of experts on intersecting social, economic, political, and cultural dimensions of disability, that complements disability scholarship. The 37 chapters, organised into three major sections, provide an assessment of the history of the field, its current state, and the future for research on and in the sociology of disability.
ISBN: 0190093196Publication Date: 2023Politics of Empowerment: Disability Rights and the Cycle of American Policy Reform by Despite the progress of decades-old disability rights policy, including the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act, threats continue to undermine the wellbeing of this population. The U.S. is, thus, a policy innovator and laggard in this regard. In Politics of Empowerment, David Pettinicchio offers a historically grounded analysis of the singular case of U.S. disability policy, countering long-held views of progress that privilege public demand as its primary driver. By the 1970s, a group of legislators and bureaucrats came to act as "political entrepreneurs." Motivated by personal and professional commitments, they were seen as experts leading a movement within the government. But as they increasingly faced obstacles to their legislative intentions, nascent disability advocacy and protest groups took the cause to the American people forming the basis of the contemporary disability rights movement. Drawing on extensive archival material, Pettinicchio redefines the relationship between grassroots advocacy and institutional politics, revealing a cycle of progress and backlash embedded in the American political system.
ISBN: 9781503600874Publication Date: 2019Understanding Disability: Inclusion, Access, Diversity, and Civil Rights by Disability is rarely considered a social issue. Scholars tend to discuss it in the abstract; medical personnel view it as a health issue; and legal concerns for the disabled focus on how to advocate or protect organizations against demands for accommodation. As a result, disabled individuals are seen as bits and pieces of everyone's constituency but their own. The writers of this work, both having long personal experiences with disabilities, offer a holistic understanding of the lives of disabled individuals from representations in the media to issues of civil rights. Written to educate and inform readers about the social roles of disability, this accessible and informative work addresses: social classifications of disability; social reactions to disability; legal rights and classifications of persons with disabilities; issues of accessibility to information and communication technologies; representations of disability in a range of media, including literature, painting, film, television and advertising; and major issues shaping the contemporary social roles of persons with disabilities. By examining the social roles of disability in the past and present from a range of perspectives and disciplines, this book reveals a portrait of the social place, limitations, and rights of persons with disabilities.
ISBN: 0275982262Publication Date: 2005