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This chapter asserts the theoretical importance of a relational approach for examining the historical development of civil rights for people with intellectual disabilities. A relational approach examines contestations over rights as embedded within and across various groups, settings, and times. Through this approach, we see, first, that struggles over rights are primarily struggles over “relational visions,” or the desired relational structure across groups. Second, rights for people with disabilities intersect with rights for other minority groups, and therefore, we must examine the broader stratification and relational structure. Third, rights developed differently depending on relational setting. Finally, rights have been used as “technologies of power,” requiring “normative” behavior for inclusion. Overall, a relational approach provides a set of concepts and a theoretical framework that furthers our understanding of citizenship for people with intellectual disabilities as it transformed through time and as it developed alongside citizenship for other populations.

Purpose: The purpose of this chapter is to scrutinize the apparent alliance between international and local disability rights movements by contextualizing the process in which the disability rights model is being diffused globally. It seeks to critically examine the transplantation and promotion of the international disability rights movement's rights-based model in China.

Approach: This chapter draws from 18 in-depth interviews with local and international disability rights activists through multisite ethnographic fieldwork in China in 2019.

Findings: This chapter finds that despite opening up spaces for resistance and emancipation locally, the international disability rights movement nevertheless constitutes what I call an enclave of rights that insulates the international rights model from the political, social, and economic realities on the ground. In the case of China, the authoritarian politics that define the relationship between the state and civil society, as well as the economic vulnerability of people with disabilities in the post-socialist market economy, limit, if not invalidate, the rights model espoused by the international disability rights movement.

Implications: The findings of this chapter challenge and complicate the current scholarship of the transnational disability rights movement beyond its normative claims of emancipation. They also explore potential spaces and direction for building a new transnational alliance that takes into account the local experience of disability in a rapidly globalized world.

This chapter explores the relationship between disability identity, civil rights, and the law. Twenty-five years after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the question remains why disability rights legislation does not go far enough toward addressing access, stigma, and discrimination issues. People with disabilities have found empowerment from disability rights laws, but these laws are also restrictive because they define people in relation to medical aspects of their disabilities and narrowly define society’s obligation for inclusion. The successes and failures of disability rights laws are an important contribution to the study of conceptions of difference.

People with learning disabilities may experience discrimination which prevents them from exercising choice and control over their right to participate in democratic processes. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Taking data collected by social workers during a campaign from the 2015 UK General Election, this paper analyses the variables associated with higher rates of democratic participation by people with learning disabilities.

The present authors undertook secondary analysis on data collected by social workers supporting adults with learning disabilities who were living in community housing units. In total, 1,019 people with learning disabilities who were living in 124 community housing units in one English county gave consent to participate. In total, 84 per cent were registered to vote and 26 per cent cast a vote on polling day. People were significantly more likely to cast a vote if they lived in a housing unit where they understood their rights (Wald χ² =4.896, p=0.027).

The analyses are consistent with the hypothesis that supporting people with learning disabilities to understand their right to participate in elections increases the likelihood they will cast a vote on a polling day. There are practical implications from this finding for commissioning practices, support planning, and education of health and social care practitioners.

This is the first study of this size which examines data from people with learning disabilities on their experience of democratic participation and the role of social work.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a commentary on “Intellectual disability in Switzerland: the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, as a vehicle for progress”.

This commentary highlights the importance of including people with intellectual disabilities in human rights reporting. The commentary builds on available data from academic research as well as civil society reports.

Three main aspects are presented: the lack of involvement of people with intellectual disabilities in human rights reporting, the barriers to their participation in developing and publishing human rights reports and possible strategies to tackle those barriers.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with disabilities (CRPD) makes it mandatory to include people with intellectual disabilities in policy-making as well as in monitoring the CRPD. Academics need to change their practice to include people with intellectual disabilities in human rights research.

Through a reflection on a recent voting rights campaign for people with disabilities in Lebanon, the article aims to contribute to a body of literature that seeks to challenge the marginalisation of people with disabilities; and aims to share our reflections with others interested in deeper thinking on the global impacts on their day‐to‐day work.

The article begins with a background discussion of the Lebanese context and the voting rights campaign, followed by an analysis of rights‐based work through a discussion of key issues faced by community activists.

The analysis highlights the impact of global forces on local grassroots work through the following issues: formalisation of relationships between national government organisations (NGOs); professionalisation within NGOs; contentious dealings with the state; the meanings and uses of diversity and international political relations.

There is a dearth of published studies on the disability‐rights movement in the Arab region; more specifically, the article provides a critical reflection on the changes facing the movement in Lebanon, where there are no published studies on the topic. This article would be of value to activists in other parts of the world interested in the changes facing activism on disability rights or other issues.

This chapter examines disability rights movement's rejection of a right to physician-assisted suicide (PAS). Supporters of PAS frame the right to enlist a physician's help in determining the nature and timing of one's death as a fundamental liberty interest and as a right to privacy. The disability opposition counters this with disparate impact and slippery slope arguments and stories of disability pride as a rhetorical rejection of a right it deems dangerous and discriminatory. In examining this clash of rights talk, this chapter analyzes the legal and political consequences of anti-rights rhetoric by a movement that is grounded in notions of autonomy and self-determination.

This chapter explores the historical and evolving relationship between human rights, social justice, and library support of these efforts through physical and digital access, as well as relevant legal frameworks.

We explore the connection between libraries, technology, human rights, and social justice. The human rights and social justice functions of libraries are descriptive of what libraries have become in the age of the Internet. Many aspects of the information and communication capabilities that are provided through Internet access have been leveraged to promote human rights and social justice throughout the world.

There is practical evidence through case studies and survey results that libraries have primarily embraced this direction through offering many individuals without Internet access or technology experience a place of physical access, education, and an ongoing atmosphere of inclusion and accessibility as society embraces an increasingly digital future. This focus on rights and justice exists within varying legal structures related to people with disabilities and to values of rights and justice. Many libraries have also created programs and services that are targeted toward online equity for people with disabilities. This proactive response regarding digital accessibility is indicative of the likelihood that there is an inclusive future for libraries and their services to the broadest of their communities.

Highlighting this role and a motto of access for all will enable libraries to expand their significant contributions to human rights and social justice that extend beyond the traditional physical infrastructure and space of libraries.

Inclusion Europe, the European movement of people with intellectual disabilities and their families, shared what people with intellectual disabilities and their families faced during the COVID-19 crisis. Collecting information showed people with intellectual disabilities were segregated and discriminated against. The pandemic intensified and magnified the segregation and discrimination of people with intellectual disabilities, shedding light on their exclusion. Many human rights were violated. Therefore, such testimonies should encourage governments and institutions to urgently design a society that includes people with intellectual disabilities and their families.

The research for this study engages and assesses the relationship of the media from the 20th to the 21st century, combining scholar activism and public leadership in the disability rights movement. Having chronicled the disability rights movement from its roots, this chapter presents the discourse of media and movement, sampling mainstream media along with the advocacy and alternative media in support of disability rights. A range of media forms are engaged from advocacy bulletins to mainstream news media to public broadcasts that represent the diversity and complexity of the movement as it continues into the 21st century, pressing for the universalism of human rights for all.