Special Collections
Disability Collection
Description: Bookshare is pleased to offer a collection focused on the topic of disability and accessibility. #disability
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A Brush With Darkness
by Lisa FittipaldiWhen Lisa Fittipaldi went blind at the age of forty-seven, she descended into a freefall of anger and denial that lasted for two years. In this moving memoir, she paints a vivid picture of the perceptual and emotional darkness that accompanied her vision loss, and her arduous journey back into the sighted world through mastery of the principles of art and color.
Of Sound Mind
by Jean FerrisTired of interpreting for his deaf family and resentful of their reliance on him, high school senior Theo finds support and understanding from Ivy, a new student who also has a deaf parent.
Guaranteed Rights
by Joan EsherickFrom the Book jacket: A local modeling program denies thirteen-year-old Maria the chance to participate in its workshops. The reason? She uses a wheelchair. What should she do? The state of Alabama nearly pulls the plug on a disabled college student's medical support. Why? He was approaching his twenty-first birthday. Are there other avenues this teen can pursue? Employers reject nineteen-year-old Manuel's job application because he has a history of seizures, even though his seizures are completely controlled by medication and his last episode was more than five years ago. Can Manuel appeal? These cases reflect real teens in real circumstances. And all three represent how special needs legislation impacts youth with special needs. Youth with special needs want the chance to reach their potentials, despite the challenges they must overcome. Some face physical or medical challenges. Others have psychological or emotional disorders. Still others live in at-risk circumstances beyond their control. Some may even be in jail. American law affords all these young people certain rights and protections, regardless of their special needs. What are these rights? Where do they come from? Whom do they protect? Guaranteed Rights: The Legislation That Protects Youth with Special Needs will answer these and other questions. It examines the history, passage, and enforcement of special needs law as it relates to appropriate education, appropriate medical care, and equal access to jobs, public places, and services for all youth with special needs.
Special Needs Trusts
by Stephen EliasIf you care for a child or other loved one with a disability, you've no doubt thought about what will happen when you're no longer able to give that care. Fortunately, there's a simple solution to this dilemma -- create a "special needs trust." Special Needs Trusts shows you how to leave any amount of money to your disabled loved one, without jeopardizing government benefits. It provides plain-English information and forms that let you create a special needs trust by modifying your will or living trust document.
Crazy
by Pete EarleyFrom the Publisher: Pete Earley had no idea. He'd been a journalist for over thirty years, and the author of several award-winning-even bestselling-nonfiction books about crime and punishment and society. Yet he'd always been on the outside looking in. He had no idea what it was like to be on the inside looking out until his son, Mike, was declared mentally ill, and Earley was thrown headlong into the maze of contradictions, disparities, and catch-22s that is America's mental health system. The more Earley dug, the more he uncovered the bigger picture: Our nation's prisons have become our new mental hospitals. Crazy tells two stories. The first is his son's. The second describes what Earley learned during a yearlong investigation inside the Miami-Dade County jail, where he was given complete, unrestricted access. There, and in the surrounding community, he shadowed inmates and patients; interviewed correctional officers, public defenders, prosecutors, judges, mental-health professionals, and the police; talked with parents, siblings, and spouses; consulted historians, civil rights lawyers, and legislators. The result is both a remarkable piece of investigative journalism, and a wake-up call-a portrait that could serve as a snapshot of any community in America.
What Do You Mean I Have a Learning Disability?
by Kathleen M. DwyerTen-year-old Jimmy just accepts the fact that other kids can do things better than he can. It's always been that way--but now Jimmy is starting to think there must be a reason. One day he whispers to his cat, "I'm so stupid. I know I am." This true story has a happy ending. One of Jimmy's teachers encouraged his parents to have Jimmy tested, and it turned out that he had a learning disability. Hard work and perseverance, and the support of his family, helped Jimmy overcome his disability. For children who are learning disabled, and for their families and friends, this inspiring book offers encouragement and support in a shared effort.
Teaching Students with Special Needs
by Tom E. C. Smith and Edward A. Polloway and James R. Patton and Carol A. Dowdythe one thing that will remain constant is the commitment to provide all students, regardless of their abilities or disabilities, with an equal opportunity to receive an appropriate education.
The Social Dimensions of Learning Disabilities
by Mavis Donahue and Bernice Y. L. WongEssays discussiing the social aspects of Learning Disabilities
Seeing Beyond Sight
by Tony DeifellFor five years Tony Deifell taught teenagers to take photographs. His students were blind. Unusual as the idea may seem at first, putting cameras in the hands of visually impaired children proved to be extremely fruitful both for the photographers, who found an astonishing new means of self-expression, and for the viewers of their images, for whom this is an entirely new kind of dreamlike and intuitive creation. Even before you know that these pictures were taken by blind teenagers, they are striking in their use of light and composition, and haunting in their chiaroscuro intensity. To learn more, visit http://www.seeingbeyondsight.org/
Enabling Acts
by Lennard J. DavisThe first significant book on the history and impact of the ADA--the "eyes on the prize" moment for disability rights.
The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is the widest-ranging and most comprehensive piece of civil rights legislation ever passed in the United States, and it has become the model for disability-based laws around the world. Yet the surprising story behind how the bill came to be is little known.
In this riveting account, acclaimed disability scholar Lennard J. Davis delivers the first behind-the-scenes and on-the-ground narrative of how a band of leftist Berkeley hippies managed to make an alliance with upper-crust, conservative Republicans to bring about a truly bipartisan bill.
Based on extensive interviews with all the major players involved including legislators and activists, Davis recreates the dramatic tension of a story that is anything but a dry account of bills and speeches. Rather, it's filled with one indefatigable character after another, culminating in explosive moments when the hidden army of the disability community stages scenes like the iconic "Capitol Crawl" or an event some describe as "deaf Selma," when students stormed Gallaudet University demanding a "Deaf President Now!"
From inside the offices of newly formed disability groups to secret breakfast meetings surreptitiously held outside the White House grounds, here we meet countless unsung characters, including political heavyweights and disability advocates on the front lines. "You want to fight?" an angered Ted Kennedy would shout in an upstairs room at the Capitol while negotiating the final details of the ADA. Congressman Tony Coelho, whose parents once thought him to be possessed by the devil because of his epilepsy, later became the bill's primary sponsor. There's Justin Dart, adorned in disability power buttons and his signature cowboy hat, who took to the road canvassing fifty states, and people like Patrisha Wright, also known as "The General," Arlene Myerson or "the brains," "architect" Bob Funk, and visionary Mary Lou Breslin, who left the hippie highlands of the West to pursue equal rights in the marble halls of DC.
Published for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the ADA, Enabling Acts promises to ignite readers in a discussion of disability rights by documenting this "eyes on the prize" moment for tens of millions of American citizens.
Through the Rain and Rainbow
by Lyle M. CristRichard Kenny lost his sight at age seven. He spent his childhood adjusting to and overcoming blindness. He entered college but had to drop out in his second year when his hearing failed.
The next ten years contained motes of both great anguish and sweet victory as he adjusted to being totally deaf-blind. With perseverance, the support of family and friends, and the counsel of such leaders as Helen Keller and other workers for the deaf and blind, Kenny became the third deaf-blind person in history to earn a college degree. He married, became a father, traveled and wrote.
Independent Living for Physically Disabled People
by Irving Kenneth Zola and Nancy M. CreweA text book for students in Rehabilitation Counseling classes.
A Brief History of Dog Guides for the Blind
by Nelson CoonThis small book originally an article written by the reference librarian at the Blindiana Library at Perkins School for the Blind highlights the varied and long history of dog guides for blind people. From Pompae, to Japan, from the 15th centure to biblical times the author depicts and writes about dogs guiding blind people. Illustrated with descriptive paintings and texts from various books, this book is a treasure for anyone who loves dogs, and or history.
Louis Braille
by Margaret Davidson and CompereA poignant story of the man who developed the Braille system of printing for the blind.
Learning Outside the Lines
by Jonathan Mooney and David ColeEvery day, your school, your teachers, and even your peers draw lines to measure and standardize intelligence. They decide what criteria make one person smart and another person stupid. They decide who will succeed and who will just get by. Perhaps you find yourself outside the norm, because you learn differently -- but, unlike your classmates, you have no system in place that consistently supports your ability and desire to learn. Simply put, you are considered lazy and stupid. You are expected to fail. Learning Outside the Lines is written by two such "academic failures" -- that is, two academic failures who graduated from Brown University at the top of their class. Jonathan Mooney and David Cole teach you how to take control of your education and find true success -- and they offer all the reasons why you should persevere.
Train Go Sorry
by Leah Hager CohenThis portrait of New York's Lexington School for the Deaf is not just a work of journalism. It is also a memoir, since Leah Hager Cohen grew up on the school's campus and her father is its superintendent. As a hearing person raised among the deaf, Cohen appreciates both the intimate textures of that silent world and the gulf that separates it from our own.
The War Come Home
by Deborah Cohen"This impressive book offers a powerful set of insights into the lasting effects of the First World War and the different ways in which belligerent states came to terms with the war's consequences."
Words in My Hands
by Diane ChambersBert Riedel, an 86-year-old deaf-blind pianist, cut off from the world since age 45, discovers a new life through hand-over-hand sign, taught to him by the author.
About Us
by Peter Catapano and Rosemarie Garland-ThomsonBased on the pioneering New York Times series, About Us collects the personal essays and reflections that have transformed the national conversation around disability.
Boldly claiming a space in which people with disabilities can be seen and heard as they are—not as others perceive them—About Us captures the voices of a community that has for too long been stereotyped and misrepresented. Speaking not only to those with disabilities, but also to their families, coworkers and support networks, the authors in About Us offer intimate stories of how they navigate a world not built for them. Since its 2016 debut, the popular New York Times’ “Disability” column has transformed the national dialogue around disability. Now, echoing the refrain of the disability rights movement, “Nothing about us without us,” this landmark collection gathers the most powerful essays from the series that speak to the fullness of human experience—stories about first romance, childhood shame and isolation, segregation, professional ambition, child-bearing and parenting, aging and beyond.
Reflecting on the fraught conversations around disability—from the friend who says “I don’t think of you as disabled,” to the father who scolds his child with attention differences, “Stop it stop it stop it what is wrong with you?”—the stories here reveal the range of responses, and the variety of consequences, to being labeled as “disabled” by the broader public.
Here, a writer recounts her path through medical school as a wheelchair user—forging a unique bridge between patients with disabilities and their physicians. An acclaimed artist with spina bifida discusses her art practice as one that invites us to “stretch ourselves toward a world where all bodies are exquisite.” With these notes of triumph, these stories also offer honest portrayals of frustration over access to medical care, the burden of social stigma and the nearly constant need to self-advocate in the public realm.
In its final sections, About Us turns to the questions of love, family and joy to show how it is possible to revel in life as a person with disabilities. Subverting the pervasive belief that disability results in relentless suffering and isolation, a quadriplegic writer reveals how she rediscovered intimacy without touch, and a mother with a chronic illness shares what her condition has taught her young children. With a foreword by Andrew Solomon and introductory comments by co-editors Peter Catapano and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, About Us is a landmark publication of the disability movement for readers of all backgrounds, forms and abilities.
Topics Include: Becoming Disabled • Mental Illness is not a Horror Show • Disability and the Right to Choose • Brain Injury and the Civil Right We Don’t Think • The Deaf Body in Public Space • The Everyday Anxiety of the Stutterer • I Use a Wheelchair. And Yes, I’m Your Doctor • A Symbol for “Nobody” That’s Really for Everybody • Flying While Blind • My $1,000 Anxiety Attack • A Girlfriend of My Own • The Three-Legged Dog Who Carried Me • Passing My Disability On to My Children • I Have Diabetes. Am I to Blame? • Learning to Sing Again • A Disabled Life is a Life Worth Living
A Special Kind Of Brain
by Nancy Russell BurgerSharing the experience of bringing up a child with nonverbal learning disability (NLD), this warm and accessible book offers advice on subjects ranging across diagnosis and therapy, children's interaction with each other, suitable activities for a child with NLD and how to discuss NLD with children. An essential guide, this book will reassure, advise and inform parents and professionals who work with children with NLD.
Signs of Resistance
by Susan Burch and Paul K. Longmore and Lauri UmanskyDuring the early nineteenth century, American schools for deaf education regarded sign language as the "natural language" of deaf people, using it as the principal mode of instruction and communication. These schools inadvertently became the seedbeds of an emerging Deaf community and culture. But by mid-century, an oralist movement developed that sought to suppress sign language, removing Deaf teachers and requiring deaf people to learn speech and lip reading. Historians have all assumed that in the early decades of the twentieth century oralism triumphed overwhelmingly.
Susan Burch shows us that everyone has it wrong; Deaf students, teachers, and staff consistently and creatively subverted oralist policies and goals within the schools. Ultimately, the efforts to assimilate Deaf people resulted in fortifying their ties to a separate Deaf cultural community.
In Signs of Resistance, Susan Burch persuasively reinterprets early twentieth century Deaf history. Using community sources such as Deaf newspapers, memoirs, films, and oral (sign language) interviews, Burch shows how the Deaf community mobilized to defend sign language, increased its political activism, and clarified its cultural values. In the process, a collective Deaf consciousness, identity, and political organization were formed.
Lend Me Your Ear
by Brenda Jo BrueggemannExplores, from the perspective of a rhetorician who is herself deaf, the social, cultural and educational impacts of deafness, both inside and outside of deaf culture.
The Disabled Disciple
by Elizabeth J. BrowneElizabeth Browne, a doctor of theology explores how the bible represents people with disabilities and how the church represents people with disabilities. Good book for ministers, or just people interested in Christianity who are blind or disabled.
Steps to Independence for People with Learning Disabilities
by Dale S. BrownThe booklet is designed to help learning disabled (LD) adults become economically independent and fulfill their potential. Introductory chapters define LD and specify such types of LD as auditory perceptual problems, catastrophic responses, directional problems, disinhibition, perceptual problems, and short term memory problems. Psychological effects of never being diagnosed are noted as well as potential dangers of being labeled. Suggestions for securing a professional diagnosis and for diagnosing one's self are given. Parents are encouraged to find practical solutions to family life problems and to teach independent living skills. Vocational aspects are examined, including searching for a job, choosing the right one, and being proud of one's job. Ideas are listed for analyzing strengths and weaknesses to overcome one's own handicap. The importance of social skills training is stressed. Practical coping strategies for dealing with perceptual problems (visual perception, dyslexia, and auditory perception) and central nervous system disorganization (directionality, hyperactivity, disinhibition, catastrophic response, and perseveration) are addressed. A final chapter lists sources of further information, professional help, and self help groups.
A Different Life
by Quinn Bradlee and Jeff HimmelmanBorn with a hole in his heart that required invasive surgery when he was only three months old, Quinn Bradlee suffered from a battery of illnesses: seizures, migraines, fevers from an early age. But it wasn't until he was fourteen that Bradlee was correctly diagnosed with Velo-Cardio-Facial Syndrome (VCFS), a widespread, little-understood disorder that is expressed through a wide range of physical ailments and learning disabilities. Ten percent of the population is affected by a learning disability, but few of us understand what being learning disabled (LD) is really like. In this funny, moving, and often irreverent book, Bradlee tells his own inspirational story of growing up as an LD kid and of doing so as the child of larger-than-life, formidably accomplished parents: long-time Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee and bestselling author Sally Quinn. From his difficulties reading social cues, to his cringe-worthy loss of sexual innocence, Bradlee describes the challenges and joys of living "a different life" with disarming candor and humor. By the end of A Different Life he will have become, if not your best friend, one of your favorite people.