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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.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how library staff understand disability and attitudinal barriers and how they use their knowledge of attitudinal barriers when planning programs and services for individuals with disabilities.

This study took a generic qualitative approach to examining how library staff understand disability and attitudinal barriers. Participants were recruited through emails to professional library associations throughout the United States of America. Emails directed participants to a screening questionnaire, and 15 respondents were selected to participate in semi-structured interviews.

The results of the study showed that participants were aware of attitudinal barriers, but attitudinal barriers were not often considered during the planning and implementation of library programs and services.

This study is one of a limited body of work examining library staff's understanding of attitudinal barriers to library services for individuals with disabilities.

Looks at the 2000 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference held at the University of Cardiff in Wales on 6/7 September 2000. Spotlights the 76 or so presentations within and shows that these are in many, differing, areas across management research from: retail finance; precarious jobs and decisions; methodological lessons from feminism; call centre experience and disability discrimination. These and all points east and west are covered and laid out in a simple, abstract style, including, where applicable, references, endnotes and bibliography in an easy‐to‐follow manner. Summarizes each paper and also gives conclusions where needed, in a comfortable modern format.

A person’s value in terms of physical and mental abilities, talents and skills is not simply located in degrees of her/his body’s ability to function. Efforts to achieve social and workplace equality for people with a physical/body or psychological/mental disability have grown to a transnational social movement. The community of people with a disability may be among the largest, most diverse group of people. By examining disability through lenses of cultural, economic, and political contexts, Chapter 10 underscores the importance of understanding how and why experiences and issues associated with social identity shaped by these dimensions has captured the attention of policymakers and employers around the world.

A person’s identity is socially constructed and impacted by government policy, cultural values, and organizational decision making. The field of disability studies is dedicated to advancing greater understanding of experiences of people with a disability and empowering them to pursue happy and fulfilling lives. Institutionalized manifestations of stigma, ableism, discrimination, and bias diminish these pursuits, however. People everywhere and the organizations staffed and managed by them are urged to consider the positive outcomes of fully embracing people with a disability for their ability to perform responsibilities and to bring unique perspectives on organizational practices and exchanges with key stakeholders. Chapter 10 examines subthemes central to the study of social identity among people with a disability: paradigm shift and policy making about disability, legislation and policy, people working with a disability in organizations, language and naming debates, and disability and other social identity intersectionalities.

This chapter describes the contribution of Third World feminism for a materially grounded understanding of inclusive education that can make the transnational significance of this field more robust and enduring. The work of Third World feminist scholar, C. T. Mohanty, forms the central focus of the discussion, which develops linkages between the philosophical roots of her teachings and the work of some disability studies scholars. I argue that a historical-materialist understanding of disability is necessary for developing a nuanced theory of inclusive education that confers significance to the element of process. This supports a more expansive conceptualization of inclusive education that can avoid the theory-practice divide which leaves schooling systems around the world at hierarchized locations of ‘success’ or ‘failure’ in realizing its principles.

This study frames the international disability movement – NGOs, foreign donors, and transnational networks focused on promoting the 2006 UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities – as an organizational environment. As the movement expands into the Global South, it actively pressures local grassroots associations to adopt a new organizational model in order to become membership-based advocacy organizations. Many groups, however, are embedded in local civic environments that expect them to act as self-help and social support organizations. As such, grassroots associations are caught between two organizational environments, each promoting different models and practices.

This analysis draws upon 18 months of participant observation and 69 interviews gathered from a local coalition of seven grassroots disability associations in Nicaragua. This ethnographic approach is combined with sociological institutionalism, an analysis that emphasizes the way organizations conform to organizational models that spread across a field.

The local associations responded in a variety of ways to the advocacy model promoted by the international movement. Organizations either conformed, resisted, or developed hybrid organizational models on the basis of internal characteristics that determined how they straddled the two organizational environments.

This paper highlights the way international models may be ineffective in local environments that have civic traditions and lower levels of governmental capacity than found in the West. Some disability associations, however, will creatively combine local and international models to create new initiatives that make a positive impact in the lives of persons with disabilities at the grassroots.

This chapter lays out the conceptual foundations for this book. Grounded in the tradition of disability studies, the authors describe their orientation to ‘inclusion’ and the entangled institutions of general and special education. They explain their attachment to the many ‘articulations’ of inclusive practices rather than engage in discourses of ‘implementation’ which inadvertently divide world regions. In doing so, they briefly trace the evolution of inclusion as a global concept and its relation to conditions in different parts of the world. They subsequently offer an introduction to the different chapters in the book.

The purpose of this chapter is to survey and synthesis the literature on: (1) myths and misinformation about persons with disabilities that create attitudinal barriers to employment, (2) best practices in employing persons with disabilities, (3) the business case for hiring persons with disabilities and (4) corporate social responsibility and disability, in order to distill a model for changing corporate culture for successfully integrating employees with disabilities into an organizations workforce.

An extensive review of the above mentioned literature is synthesized and distilled into a model.

The review indicates a number of best practices to be implemented in order to successfully integrate employees with disabilities into the workforce. These factors have been synthesized into a model to guide employers in affecting corporate cultural change to address the integration of person with disabilities into the organization.

A systematic approach to integration of employees with disabilities, informed by the significant business logic for doing so.

The chapter provides an extensive survey of the literature on disability employment and highlights attitudinal barriers to employing persons with disabilities, the business case and social responsibility case for employing persons with disabilities, the best practices for success and synthesizes these factors into an original model to guide business in cultural change making.

The purpose of this paper is to overview an institution wide accessibility project undertaken at the Vietnam locations of a transnational Australian university, and the significance of this initiative in symbolising the organisation’s commitment to inclusion and diversity. The project implemented universal accessibility standards for learning materials across all courses delivered at the university. This facilitated an easier in-class and online learning experience for students with a broad range of print disabilities, visual or hearing impairments, and a range of other learning differences or disabilities.

The implementation of this project entailed three concurrent streams of activity which the authors describe in this paper. These included development of accessibility standards and processes for conversion of the existing learning materials, a sustained awareness raising campaign for staff and students, and integration of the accessibility standards into induction, support and development activities.

The process of establishing the technical foundations for inclusion through a focus on accessibility prompted rich dialogue with staff and students around inclusive practices. Many staff working in professional and non-teaching roles voluntarily adopted the standards to promote an inclusive workplace. Capability building activities for high school teachers were also conducted for the Vietnamese Department of Education & Training.

The approach outlined in this case is highly transferable, and provides a practical roadmap for achieving accessibility and promoting an inclusive environment. The strategies described through the lens of Kotter’s (1996) process for leading change in this paper can be applied by higher education institutions internationally.

There is a lack of knowledge transfer regarding administrative challenges and interpersonal experiences of participatory research designs. Aside from the question of whether the research is valid, researchers often have to answer questions regarding the process itself: how did it actually work? The mystery thickens when research and collaborative structures take place beyond and across national and/or cultural borders. Research traditions differ and diverse academic socialisation backgrounds can take a long time to decode. Participatory approaches are still the exception, and in certain research communities they may even be rather exotic. The set-up of collaborative structures and approaches to the field enables or hinders participatory approaches that have proven key in realising inclusive education. This chapter aims to provide thoughts on and insights into the importance, opportunities, and possible pitfalls of planning participatory research across national and cultural borders. It glimpses behind the scenes of mere research procedures to better understand the challenges and explain the opportunities that come with participatory approaches in international contexts.