Shallow Inclusion (or Integration) and Deep Exclusion: En-Dis-Abling Identities through Government Webpages in Hong Kong

This article is primarily concerned with how government webpages in Hong Kong claiming to embrace social inclusion and provide services and support for persons with disabilities construct issues relating to disability. These texts are not read in isolation. Instead, they are considered in conjunction with discourse produced in several United Nations documents, especially the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, to which Hong Kong is a signatory. These documents appear to both proffer and retract social inclusion in ways that complicate, if not undermine entirely, their purportedly inclusionary intentions. This article also reflects upon commentary produced by university students at a public university in Hong Kong responding to government discourse. Such focus upon ‘non-disabled’ readers reveals how texts do more than merely mediate pre-existing messages. Instead, they constitute a “social location and organizer for the accomplishment of meaning”, thereby counting as “a form of social action” (Titchkosky, 2007, p. 27). Through the texts they conspire to make about disability, authors and readers become complicit in the production, maintenance, and reinforcement of non-disabled (or abled)/disabled identities and dis/ableist ideology in ways that implicate the entire population in exclusionary processes.

Disability and Genetic Modification

This chapter examines the theme of disability, including attitudes toward disability and ideas about deviations from the bodily norm, that Bujold explores in her fictional work. While disability is rarely treated in science fiction and fantasy, it is ubiquitous in Bujold's work. Most visible is Miles Vorkosigan himself, whose fetus was damaged by an insurgent's attack and who struggles with his brittle bones and other problems throughout the early decades of his life. But to Miles can be added many other characters whose physical or mental disabilities are a crucial part of the narrative, from the brain-damaged Dubauer in Shards of Honor to the one-handed Dag in the Sharing Knife sequence, and Cazaril, with a mutilated hand and a demonic stomach tumor, in the first Chalion book. Bujold has declared that she was never writing books about issues: they are about character. The disabilities with which her characters have to cope “do not comprise the sums of their characters nor the reasons for their existences, but are just plot-things that happen to them and with which they must deal, daily or otherwise,” and she adds that the letters she gets from disabled readers suggest that they prefer that approach.

The Effects of Phonological Awareness on Word Formation and Decoding Skills of Disabled Readers

In the recent times, educators and researchers have focused attention on the identification of methods to increase the effectiveness of reading instruction in our schools. One of the most compelling and well-established findings in this field of research is the important relation between phonological awareness and reading. This study examined the effects of phonological awareness on the word formation and decoding skills of disabled beginning readers. Data gathered using a quasi-experimental design involving 100 pupils in experimental and control conditions showed significant achievement on the skills of decoding t (98) = 15.22 p < 0.05 and word formation t (98) = 16.02 p < 0.05. The implications of the findings of the study for reading instruction in developing countries are drawn.

Applied-Information Technology in Barrier-Free Service of University Library

It’s the library’s duty to offer barrier-free service for the disabled. And applied-information technology is applied into the barrier-free service, which may be found helpful to promote the disabled readers’ initiatives and help them seek for information conveniently in library. There are some measures university library can take to offer barrier-free service with applied-information technology such as opening more free computer-training classes for disabled readers to improve their information skills, offering aural OPAC service, posting the copies of library resources by E-mail and providing assistive technology and equipment related to information service. In addition to these measures, some activities like enriching the spiritual and cultural life of the disabled readers and increasing the communication between able-bodied people and the disabled.

The Library Science Defectology Matters in the Scientific Heritage of A.E. Shaposhnikov

This article is devoted to the analysis of the scientific heritage of A.E. Shaposhnikov. The article analyzes the contribution of the scientist to the development of the domestic defectological library science, to the formation of the system view of rehabilitation tasks of the Russian libraries. Special attention is paid to the concept and methodological aspects of social and cultural rehabilitation of disabled readers, substantiated by the researcher.