1st Edition
Accessibility Denied. Understanding Inaccessibility and Everyday Resistance to Inclusion for Persons with Disabilities
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.
List of contributors
Introduction: Into the fields of stubborn obstacles and lingering exclusion
Hanna Egard, Kristofer Hansson & David Wästerfors
Part 1 - City and transport
- Accessible enough? Legitimising half-measures of accessibility in Swedish urban environments
Hanna Egard - The bus trip: Constraints, hierarchies and injustice
Vanessa Stjernborg - Monitoring the standard – here, now and in person: Detecting accessibility faults as an engaged citizen
David Wästerfors - Traveling insecurely: The association of security and accessibility in public transport
Kristofer Hansson - Struggles for inclusion: The unrecognised toil of hearing-impaired students
Patrick Stefan Kermit - Gatekeepers and gatekeeping: On participation and marginalisation in everyday life
Sangeeta Bagga-Gupta, Giulia Messina Dahlberg & Lars Alméns - Still waiting for the hand to be raised: On being crip killjoys at an ableist university
Elisabet Apelmo & Camilla Nordgren - Access to sexuality: Disabled people’s experiences of multiple barriers
Julia Bahner - New barriers and new possibilities: Confronting language inaccessibility in and around a pandemic
Liz Adams Lyngbäck, Mia Larsdotter & Enni Paul - It is supposed to be a home: Barriers to everyday life decisions in group homes
Eric Svanelöv & Lena Talman - Making the law invisible: How bureaucratic resistance makes support inaccessible
Barbro Lewin - Using building requirements as a means to create inclusion: Accessibility and usability at a crossroads
Jonas E. Andersson
Part 2 - Knowledge and education
Part 3 - Institution, law and history
Afterword
Rannveig Traustadóttir
Biography
Hanna Egard is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social Work, Malmö University, Sweden.
Kristofer Hansson is Senior Lecturer and Associate Professor in the Department of Social Work, Malmö University, Sweden.
David Wästerfors is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology, Lund University, Sweden.
