Critical Disability Studies

investigates pathological aspects of the creative process in women artists. The book is divided into three sections. In the first, Dr. Kavaler-Adler discusses object relations theory and her understanding of both healthy and pathological creative processes. She writes that the creative process can become the captive of pathological forces. This occurs when early trauma lives psychologically within the individual and disrupts the development of the internal psychic structure necessary for critical mourning and reparation to be processed within the artist's creative work. (p. 3)

The purpose of this study was to explore patient training experiences related to the self-administration of hemodialysis at home. Researchers used a qualitative study using semi-structured interviews and a focus group. The setting was a hospital-based patient education program in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Qualitative interviews and focus group study were conducted with 23 patients (who had end stage renal disease) and caregivers who have participated in Toronto General Hospital's Nocturnal Home Hemodialysis training program to learn how to operate a hemodialysis machine and to administer their own treatments at home without the supervision of clinicians. Experience as a trainee in the Nocturnal Home Hemodialysis program was framed by 5 diverse themes: patients' perceptions of anxiety, peer support, clinician empathy and understanding learning while ill, and the compatibility of learning preferences with training practices employed. The study revealed the complexity of the pa...

what is said is – re-Revisions a poetic and oblique re/presentation of disabled women in a Canadian shelter prolegomenon It is [our] belief that feminism, as a political programme as well as a pedagogic one, needs to use different forms of writing in different times and places. Writing is strategic; it has effects.-Ahmed There remain subjects, whose very appearance troubles the solidity of dominant Western discourses. Living outside of normative structures of able-citizenship their bodies, even as surplus, provide content for academic and neoliberal discourse. Within the cultural imaginary they are exhibited as excessive and out of place: abject, disfigured, criminal, mad (Liggett). In order to gather these subjects so that we might further trouble the apparent solidity of Western epistemologies I engage a generative and reflexive practice, and affect. Theoretical, performative and lyrical strategies lean into moments from this inquiry. I 1 have spent months working with persons who do not have the place of privilege and comfort of home – instead they are insecurely housed, they abide in a shelter along a post-industrial stretch of Dundas Street West in Toronto, a stretch currently characterized by numerous empty storefronts and small family businesses. The women live with disability, and in extreme poverty. This inquiry encompasses three years of offering media, and teaching and learning with women in a neighbourhood shelter. The heart of the work is positioned within the domestic arts practices that these women have learned from their mothers, aunts, and sisters. In the spirit of feminist practices I came to understand knitting, crocheting, beading and other traditional women's practices as community building. Using the arts in this way draws upon the principles of community arts research 2 and social justice, the work is transformative. The use of poetry in the project and as a means of knowledge translation brings an additional resistive force – it resists the closure of affect within contemporary institutions. This work will not sit still, it demands language and thought and flesh – it tears into me until I " think something other " (Foucault , 455). Thinking something other, making knowledge different and different knowledge suggests that I cannot create a tidy text that maps easily onto usual ways of sense making (Lather). It is possible that thinking something other becomes writing something other and other 1 Although I use the first pronoun singular as a convention to indicate that I am the author of this work, there is no singular I identifiable within the practice. The writing is autographical, the self provisional (Perreault).The I present within this text is she who finds herself continually mulling over what is left over from shared artistic work; she is ragged and the threads she carries forward have been given to her. 2 Community arts as practiced here as feminist, participatory, dialogical, and relational. It draws upon arts movements including the Austrian arts collective Wochenklausur, Suzanne Lacy, and others who operate outside of contemporary gallery, museum and curatorial practices. The work is significant in its temporal, durational, ineffable nature rather than due to its status as a potential object for aesthetic consumption.

The faces of homeless people in Toronto are varied and diverse. In recognition of this, this report uses the phrases "diverse people experiencing homelessness" and "diverse homeless people" 2 interchangeably to refer to people who are homeless and who identify with diverse experiences and identities that often overlap with one another. These diverse experiences and identities include, but are not limited to, women, Aboriginal peoples, trans people, young mothers, racialized people/people of colour, people who use substances, and people with physical and mental health issues and disabilities. "We hope people will take time to look at our photog raphs and read our stories, not just look and go, 'Oh, that's nice' and walk off. But really look at the work we've done and think about what it feels like to walk in our shoes."

This paper describes findings of a research inquiry into the lived experience of homelessness in Peel, a suburban region located in the Greater Toronto Area in Ontario, Canada. It is based on the data from a collaborative project undertaken by members of the Faculties of Health and Education of York University with two local community organizations. The dominant theme of the narratives was that suburban homelessness is similar to being engulfed in a grotto of poverty, isolated from the rest of the community and invisible to it. Once entrapped in the grotto, it is almost impossible to escape from it. There were four sub-themes: (a) falling into the grotto, (b) living/struggling in the grotto, (c) envisioning escape routes from the grotto, and (d) beauty, community and hope in the grotto. Following a discussion of the findings, researchers describe strategies to address homelessness through promotion of social justice for all. This paper describes findings from a research inquiry into the lived experience of homelessness in Peel, a suburban region located in the Greater Toronto Area in Ontario, Canada.

On 9 December, 2013 Premier Kathleen Wynne of Ontario delivered Ontario’s Apology to Former Residents of Regional Centres For People with Developmental Disabilities at the provincial legislature. The apology was delivered a week after the Huronia Class Action Lawsuit was settled for $35 million. The poem uses the form of erasure as a response to the inadequacies of both the apology and the settlement. 

ce que le langage ne peut pas contenir, et B la paix. Dans une langue nuancke, elle propose ici une mkditation sur le sang, traversant jour et nuit, terre et paradis. On lit ici ce qui krit l'intkrieur, tranche les mots de la chair, et inscrit la mortalitk par le biais d'une profonde coupure.

The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) is a law mandating that organizations in Ontario must comply to accessibility standards for people with disabilities. However, there is no tool to report accessibility complaints and track them. To that effect, mobile applications can be effective to make report and monitor accessibility issues as they arise in private as well as public spaces (e.g. building, sidewalks). An App would provide users with an opportunity beyond the mapping of compliance, it can provide data that addresses the gaps across legislation and embodied experiences. The objective of this paper is to share a novel method associated with the development accessibility monitoring Android App prototype called “ACCESS-ABILITY.” ACCESS-ABILITY is a first-of-its-kind app in the domain of disability informatics, it facilitates the formation of a collaborative virtual community that can be used by people with disabilities, advocacy groups, organizations and off...