Column
William Levack has been doodling again. Doesn't he have anything better to do with his time? This week: Wheelchairs of the Future. Read more »
- 30 Jun 2009
Mark Ylvisaker, philosopher, speech-language pathologist, and advocate for children and adolescents with brain injury, died on 24th May 2009 and he will be greatly missed. Read more »
Claire Mackie examines recent social marketing campaigns to change attitudes towards people with disabilities, or at least towards disability parking spaces, and find some wanting... Read more »
- 14 Apr 2009
Since I came out as a gay man at 19 years old, I've been a user of home-based support, needs assessments, wheelchair assessments, physiotherapists as well as other health professionals and services, even rehabilitation at times. Every service provider, in my experience, has assumed I am heterosexual. Unless I actually say, ‘I'm a gay man', people assume I'm straight. That assumption operates at all levels of the organisation - from management, to administration, to individual staff. Read more »
Doodles from William Levack's desk. Is he funny? Who knows, but at least he fills a space... This week: Diabetes management during Easter holidays! Read more »
- 27 Mar 2009
2009 is the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of his seminal book ‘Origin of Species’. The theory of evolution is one of the most important biological discoveries, period. However, evolution has also been mis-used to promote thoroughly bad ideas such as eugenics and social engineering. In the area of disability, the theory of evolution is tainted with these notions and terms such as ‘survival of fittest’ and ‘natural selection’ are quite offensive and gives the theory of evolution a bad name (which I think it might not deserve). There are two threads of thinking that I want to very briefly explore to show that the theory of evolution need not be seen as the ‘enemy’, and may actually be helpful in understanding human behaviour. Read more »
- 01 Oct 2008
In August I attended the APA Conference in Boston. This was my first trip to the US and I was excited to be travelling to that great mythical place to see it in reality. I was mostly excited about travelling to the home of the American With Disabilities Act; had the land of the free really become the land of access and inclusion? How would it compare to the land of the Human Rights Act where access and inclusion are tolerated so long as they are reasonable? Read more »
- 09 Sep 2008
In June of this year I travelled with my wife Michelle, and 3 month old son Josh, to Stockholm in Sweden, not on some fanatical ABBA related pilgrimage (I’ll leave that to my parents generation), but to study a radically different approach to spinal cord rehabilitation – the Spinalis model. Read more »
- 08 Sep 2008
Claire Freeman ponders the reclaimation of derogatory terms about disability, by people with disability, and speculates on the extent to which she herself identifies with language associated with disability - particularly the language that is used in the current health science literature. Read more »
- 23 Aug 2008
The United Nations Convention of Rights of Persons with Disabilities came into force on 3 May 2008. Why is this convention so important and where are we at in meeting its objectives? Read more »
Steve La Grow
