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In this chapter, we examine how the schooling experiences of disabled children have changed during COVID-19, how families' engagement, advocacy and support of their children have shifted during the pandemic, and how race, class, and other axes of inequality shape these processes.

We used a semi-structured interview protocol with families of disabled children, asking them about their experiences with their children's schools before and during the pandemic. We analyzed the interview data using “flexible coding” and the constant comparative method.

COVID-19 has had wide-reaching effects on disabled children's schooling experiences, yet these effects varied, particularly at the intersections of disability with race, class, linguistic status, and gender. Remote learning and other pandemic-related changes to schools exacerbated extant inequalities in children's educational experiences, as well as in families' ability to effectively advocate for their children in school.

This research provides important information about how the pandemic has exacerbated inequality at the intersection of disability, race, and other axes of inequality. Moreover, it provides a lens to examine ableism and other systems of oppression in schools. The findings have crucial policy implications, pointing to the necessity of equitably allocated, high quality, inclusive educational services for disabled students, as well as to the need for special education policy that does not rely on individual family advocacy to allocate appropriate services.

As sociologists we all try to make a contribution to our field. Having completed our comprehensives and dissertations we have read in depth in several areas, have focused on an area that interests us, and have learned the research process whether it uses quantitative or qualitative methodology. We all make our contributions available to the field, but occasionally one among us makes a startling discovery, has an unusual idea or a way to approach a problem, starts examining a new problem at just the right moment, or has an insight into a specific conceptual problem with unusual alacrity. A few among us combine all that skill and happenstance and lead the way into new sociological insights, new areas of research and provide a notable foundation or advancement to an area of knowledge. Saad Nagi is one of those contributors with vision, insight, and skill to see ahead of his time. This paper attempts to bring together in one place his major contributions to the disability knowledge base in sociology.

The approach used in this paper is an in depth review of all of Nagi’s published works in the area of disability. The published literature is grouped into the five areas in which Nagi made major contributions, including major research of the Social Security Disability Insurance process; development of a framework for the disability process; epidemiological definitions and research; development of a coherent set of disability measures; and an examination of the social problem, policy, and program process as developed and practiced in this country.

Nagi made a large and significant contribution in all the areas listed above and much of the measurement, and process examination is still relevant and useful in current research. His framework is still the basis for the very newest models of disability which dominate disability research today.

Researchers need to go back to find Nagi books and articles written in the 60s, 70s, and 80s to ground their work in the originals rather than to take the interpretations of others on this material. The ICF and the Social Model did not originate in Europe alone, but much of the work began in the states in the early 60s with the work of Nagi, Haber, and others and should not be overlooked or ignored.

This chapter explores the experiences of people with complex conditions before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, their fears for imagined futures when the pandemic first appeared, their reflections on their experiences and present status, as well as plans for a post-pandemic future.

This research is based on semi-structured interviews conducted by phone, Zoom, or in-person with six participants, each interviewed twice – before and during the pandemic – who either have complex medical conditions or are mothers of a child with complex medical conditions, in the United States. Half the interviews were conducted before the pandemic and the other half during the pandemic.

The data illuminate the understanding of our participants of the COVID-19 pandemic as a disability issue, which should be analyzed with the focus of disability as an intersectional social category and that disabled people felt at higher risk due to ableism in health policies and getting their health needs met. The results demonstrated the tremendous impact of the pandemic on the lives of our participants with complex medical conditions, whether in their work, care, physical and mental health, and social relationships.

This study points to the importance of policymakers incorporating strategies to reduce ableism in health care provision, rationing, and other forms of decision-making. Services need to be designed keeping in mind the challenges of disabled people and their need for care. In addition, adequate education, and employment opportunities for disabled people must be ensured, while continuing to expand access options to disabled people that were available throughout the lockdown.

The purpose of this research is to investigate the process of development and implementation of strategies to promote diversity and inclusion of persons with disabilities in the workplace within Netcare (the largest private hospital group) in South Africa.

A single case study methodology is used to document best practices developed at Netcare for the integration of persons with disabilities in the workplace.

The case study demonstrates that integrating people with disabilities in the workplace is a complex process that requires bringing together disability theory/model and organizational change models. Disability integration within Netcare is an ongoing process with positive gains and gaps that can be leveraged to improve the process. Nonetheless, significant improvements in the number of persons with disability integrated at work as well as a good retention rate in the skills development program have been realized.

The documentation of practice based initiatives such as those developed by Netcare is useful for future cross-organizational and cross-context comparative studies. This will ultimately redirect policy and research agendas from the deficit analysis approach towards a more positive inquiry based upon practical and workable solutions.

The treatment of disability as a silo identity does not provide full appreciation of the multiple intersecting identities that interlock to position some persons with disabilities in positions of privilege and marginalization simultaneously.

This chapter reveals the importance of situating disability mainstreaming within a broader organizational transformation strategy. Legislating social and organizational transformation issues is necessary but insufficient to produce the desired social change. This research highlights the value of inculcating transformative leadership culture and building leadership accountability to realize the desired social and organizational change.

This chapter explores the challenges for the application of the concept of disability to other categories of oppression utilized in the notion of intersectionality.

The concept of intersectionality argues that oppression occurs within the contexts of class, race/ethnicity, religion, gender, and sexual orientation. We raise questions about the applicability of intersectionality to persons with disabilities. Using a Symbolic Interactionist approach to understand the matrix of domination or subordination, we examine how well disability as a category of disadvantage applies to intersectionality.

We argue that the fluid, heterogeneous, and discordant status characteristics, physicality, and diagnostic ambiguity of disability present a considerable challenge for the application of intersectionality as a useful paradigm for disability studies. While several ascribed statuses may contribute to the oppression of persons with disabilities, disability itself offers many unique challenges to understanding the intersection of these traits in the lives of these same people.

The conceptual uniqueness of disability produces rather complex methodological circumstances for understanding the social identity of persons with disabilities who are simultaneously members of additional categories of oppression. These complex and challenging methodological issues can best be met qualitatively, i.e., by approaching disability as lived experience.

For students of intersectionality, this chapter offers a comprehensive analysis and assessment of the concept of disability as a category of oppression.

The National Health Interview Survey on Disability, fielded between 1994 and 1997, was one of the most comprehensive and most complex surveys on disability ever conducted. This chapter describes the background of the NHIS-D, its design and contents, its technical characteristics, and initial efforts to disseminate its findings. It provides a basic background on the NHIS-D for readers of this volume, and provides analysts working with the NHIS-D insight into some of the design and development issues that have not been previously described in public documents.

Welfare policies for persons with disabilities have been strongly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, and this introductory chapter provides the theoretical background to the book. Definition, data and main European policies about disabilities are outlined. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) is the key pillar of disability policies in European countries. In line with a Disability Studies perspective, COVID-19 health surveillance regime has been a challenge in the implementation process of the UNCRPD, highlighting the role of lay knowledge and community of practices in managing everyday challenges for persons with disabilities and their families, and therefore their potential role in becoming part of epistemic communities to support the policy making and implementation process of the UNCRPD.

This article examines the dialectics of wrongful life and wrongful birth claims in Israel from 1986 until 2012. In May 2012 Israeli Supreme Court declared that while wrongful birth claims were still permitted, wrongful life claims were no longer accepted in a court of law. The article examines the conditions that allowed for and supported the expansion of wrongful life/birth claims until 2012. The article identifies two parallel dynamics of expansion: a broadening of the scope of negligent conduct and a view of milder forms of disabilities as damage that merits compensation. The article further suggests four explanations for such doctrinal evolution, two of which emanate from doctrinal ambiguities and the other two are rooted in social factors that have shaped the meaning of disability as a tragedy and state of inferiority. While recent developments seem promising, the article concludes with a word of caution. Such changes may reproduce past injustices mainly because the compensation mechanism has remained an individual-torts based one, which may run counter to the broader struggle for social change for disabled people.

The purpose of this paper is to unpack the tenuous relationship between medical sociology and disability studies, particularly as it relates to the work of Irving Zola.

Many attribute the division between these disciplines to their starkly different and oft competing approaches to disability; however, I argue that a closer examination reveals a number of commonalities between the two.

I use Irving K. Zola’s extensive body of scholarship to demonstrate the connections between these divergent approaches to disability, and imagine what his legacy has to offer to the advancement of a diverse sociology of disability.

Neither focus is more correct than the other, as considering these bodies of work together presents a number of opportunities to advance a more comprehensive sociological theory – not just of disability – but of ableism and its intersections with other forms of oppression as well.