Disability Rights (disability + right)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Beyond the ,Awkward Embrace': Disability Rights, Dialogue and ,Law, Love and Language' Revisited

NEW BLACKFRIARS, Issue 1029 2009
Nick O'Brien
Abstract Despite the perceived ,human rights revolution' within Church teaching since Vatican II, a measure of dissonance survives between secular rights theory and practice on the one hand and, on the other, ethical thinking informed by the natural law tradition. This article examines some recent developments in that secular theory and practice for signs of possible rapprochement. In particular, it considers the way in which the emergence of ,disability' as a rights issue, for example in the recently ratified United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, has contributed to the transformation of equality and human rights law and so has helped shape a broader transformation of rights theory and practice. Central to that transformation has been the ambition of establishing human rights as the basis of a progressive political programme, as witnessed for example by the work of Sandra Fredman and by the Hamlyn Lectures of Conor Gearty, whose Catholic provenance makes his approach especially salient. The article concludes by considering Herbert McCabe's interpretation of Aquinas' ethics, especially in his Law, Love and Language, and proposes some potentially fruitful points of contact between McCabe's approach and the identified developments in secular rights theory. [source]


Prenatal Testing & Disability Rights

NURSING PHILOSOPHY, Issue 1 2002
Steven Edwards
First page of article [source]


Computer-assisted teaching and assessment of disabled students in higher education: the interface between academic standards and disability rights

JOURNAL OF COMPUTER ASSISTED LEARNING, Issue 3 2007
O. Konur
Abstract, Computer-assisted teaching and assessment has become a regular feature across many areas of the curriculum in higher education courses around the world in recent years. This development has resulted in the ,digital divide' between disabled students and their nondisabled peers regarding their participation in computer-assisted courses. However, there has been a long-standing practice to ensure that disabled students could participate in these courses with a set of disability adjustments that are in line with their learning modalities under the headings of presentation format, response format, timing, and setting adjustments. Additionally, there has been a set of supporting antidiscriminatory disability laws around the world to avoid such divide between disabled students and their nondisabled peers. However, following a successful pre cedent in Davis v. Southeastern Community College (1979), the opponents of disability rights have consistently argued that making disability adjustments for disabled students to participate in computer-assisted courses would undermine academic and professional standards and these laws have resulted in a ,culture of fear' among the staff. This paper challenges such myths and argues, based on a systematic review of four major antidiscriminatory laws, that universities have full academic freedom to set the academic standards of their computer-assisted courses despite the introduction of such laws and that there has been no grounds for the perceived culture of fear about the consequences of the participation of disabled students in computer-assisted courses. [source]


Disability Rights Commission: From Civil Rights to Social Rights

JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY, Issue 4 2008
Agnes Fletcher
This paper argues that, although originally conceived as part of the ,civil rights' agenda, the development of disability rights in Britain by the Disability Rights Commission (DRC) is better seen as a movement towards the realization of social, economic, and cultural rights, and so as reaffirmation of the indissolubility of human rights in the round. As such, that process of development represents a concrete exercise in the implementation of social rights by a statutory equality body and a significant step towards the conception of disability rights as universal participation, not just individual or minority group entitlement. The paper considers the distinctive features of that regulatory activity. It asks what sort of equality the DRC set out to achieve for disabled people and where, as a result, its work positioned it on the regulatory spectrum. From the particular experience of the DRC, the paper looks forward to considerations of general relevance to other such bodies, including the new Equality and Human Rights Commission. [source]


Stigma, Community, Ethnography: Joan Ablon's Contribution to the Anthropology of Impairment-Disability

MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY QUARTERLY, Issue 2 2004
RUSSELL P. SHUTTLEWORTH
Joan Ablon has helped establish the anthropology of impairment-disability and significantly contributed to the role of anthropology in disability studies. In this article, we review the development of and situate Ablon's ethnographic research in the anthropology of impairment-disability. We then address various methodological issues in her work including her ethnographic approach, her grounding in action anthropology and her support for the development of the academic study of disability in anthropology and the careers of disabled anthropologists. The next section of the article examines Ablon's use of the notion of stigma, her understanding of community, and her engagement with disability rights. As examples of themes important to disability studies, we present her discussion of the implications of the ideal of the body beautiful, and gender differences in negotiating intimacy for people with physical differences. We close with a discussion of the future of an anthropology of impairment-disability. [disability, impairment, Ablon, genetics, ethnography] [source]