Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This is a critical examination of the disability definition in the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) with the goal of identifying how individuals with disabilities are rhetorically constructed in America’s legal system and explaining how their identities are lost in a rhetorical battle between Congress and the Supreme Court. This is accomplished by examining the three most significant Supreme Court rulings on the application of the ADA definition under Title I, which covers employment discrimination.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Virtually any discussion of disability begins with a description of the size of the population based on the statistical conventions of the moment. Those numbers become the basis for framing the problem. More importantly, they also become the basis for political decisions, establishment of programs, distribution of resources and a variety of other activities that influence the experience of individuals with disability in our society. Yet currently, no two national sources of data on disability represent the concept in the same way. How disability is defined and then converted to measures in our various surveys that become part of the national ‘official statistics’ has a lasting effect. What questions are asked (or not asked), what answer categories are provided, what methods are used, not just in collecting the data but in analyzing it as well, what tabulations are published (and what are not) all influence perceptions about the population. This paper examines newly available data that allows the researcher to compare reponses to multiple disability modules and to establish the levels of consistency in estimates among those modules.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: American disability rights discourse is firmly lodged in a civil rights model, appropriating the emphasis on equal rights and opportunities of previous identity-based social movements. A primary goal of this rights-based approach has been the transformation of people with disabilities from passive objects dependent on medicine or charity to active political subjects empowered by rights and entitlements. Disability rights, then, are posited as a natural extension of existing discourses of personal autonomy, self-determination, and independence. One of the topics central to disability activism in which this approach is disrupted is the strong opposition to "physician assisted suicide" (PAS). How do we theorize this opposition? What does it mean to reject a "right" to die, when traditional disability activism has focused on expanding the rights of people with disabilities? This paper examines the clash of rights discourse between supporters and opponents of PAS. It focuses on the disability rights critique of PAS, which I locate within a broader civil rights opposition to PAS. The civil rights opposition to PAS uses disparate impact and slippery slope arguments to counter the use of rights talk by PAS supporters. The disability rights critique, however, directly challenges a "right to die" with their own version of rights talk. This paper analyzes the tension between the emancipatory and patients rights-based approach that produced the right to die movement, and the disability rights movement’s attempt to formulate an equally emancipatory and rights-based rejection thereof.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: (to be uploaded)

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In a recent article (Darling, 2003), one of the authors proposed a typology of orientations toward disability based on opportunity structure theory. In order to determine whether this theoretical, literature-based typology could be tested empirically, the authors conducted a pilot study involving 118 people with disabilities. The results of this study supported the typology, producing four types relating to differences in access, identity, model (personal vs. social), and empowerment (activism vs. acceptance) and suggested directions for future research.