IDS 172 Disability in Modern Societies (Disability Studies): Online Collections of Primary Sources, Statistics, and Resource Lists

The Disability History Museum hosts a Library of virtual artifacts, Education curricula, and Museum exhibits. These programs are designed to foster research and study about the historical experiences of people with disabilities and their communities.

Nineteenth-Century Disability: Cultures and Contexts is an interdisciplinary collection of primary texts and images on physical and cognitive disability in the long nineteenth century (c. 1780 to 1914). Its primary goal is to immerse users in the cultures and concepts that shaped embodied experience in the nineteenth century. Currently comprising over 50 items, the reader emphasizes the technologies, institutions, and representations in literature and popular culture that shaped ideas about disability which are still current today. You can read more about the reader and how to use it here.

The National Archives holds many records that relate to American citizens with disabilities. From personal letters to historic legislation, these records provide insight into efforts over the past century to establish programs and to protect the rights of people with disabilities.

This page presents a selection of these records from the holdings of the Presidential Libraries.

Hearing directly from people with disabilities about their lives is vital to good research and effective policy. In this series of short films we learn from Rachael, a nurse with disability from the United Kingdom about the obstacles she has overcome in her career; we discover why Faustina, from Tanzania, feels that wheelchairs are so important to people with disabilities; Mia, from Lebanon, shares her experience of discrimination in education; we hear about the efforts of Feliza, from Bolivia, to promote accessibility in her home town; and Bernard from the United States of America tells us about the importance of personal assistance.

Welcome to UC Berkeley's website on the Disability Rights and Independent Living Movement. Discover our rich collection of primary sources exploring the social and political history of the disability movement from the 1960s to the present. Investigate related projects on artists with disabilities and the Self-Advocacy Movement.

Devastating in its magnitude, the Second World War brought terrible destruction and left 306,005 American soldiers dead as the result of combat. Another 571,822 sustained non-fatal wounds during the conflict. Typically when we think of WWII, we think of these soldiers, killed or injured on foreign soil, but America’s production soldiers, the men and women who manned the nation’s factories, mills, and mines, also suffered heavy physical losses during the conflict. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that each year between 1942 and 1945 there were some two million disabling or deadly industrial accidents, a total of more than six million. More than 75,000 Americans died or became permanently and totally disabled in industry during the war. Additionally, some 378,000 industrial workers suffered a permanent partial disability. This website explores both the experiences of disabled soldiers and industrial workers during WWII, battlefield medicine, industrial safety campaigns, and rehabilitation programs..

t’s Our Story is a mixed-media digital history archive that houses the most comprehensive collection of video, photos and documents regarding life with disability in America. The It’s Our Story repository and its contents are testaments to America’s most fundamental values of freedom, autonomy, and independence. The national initiative that has developed from the archive has united hundreds of grassroots advocates, scholars, educators and civic leaders from nearly every state in the United States.

Primary sources from the Library of Congress, the Disability History Museum, and other collections can provide entry points and deepen exploration into historical events. Primary sources add immediacy, such as the faces in a photograph, the emotional tone of a drawing or song, or the complex look of a handwritten document. Documents from multiple points of view can illuminate conflicting ideas and events. Varied media, including maps, oral histories, published reports, and graphs offer many options for connection and investigation.

During the mid-1980s a deaf couple, Gene and Inez Petersen, set out to meet, document, and eventually to publish the life stories of ordinary and extraordinary deaf Americans. Traveling across the country, they conducted videotaped interviews with over 160 people. Inez spent hours transcribing the videotapes. Completed transcripts were then sent to those interviewed for review, correction, approval, and return. Approximately fifty of the approved and returned transcripts were selected for inclusion in the final collection. This manuscript represents deaf Americans from various walks of life--old and young, men and women, blue collar and professionals. Together these stories recount the richness and diversity reflected in the deaf community over the last eight decades.

The Museum of the American Printing House for the Blind is dedicated to preserving and presenting the fascinating educational history of people who are blind and the historic contributions of the American Printing House for the Blind for the benefit of people who are visually impaired, educators of people who are visually impaired, and the broader community.

The Perkins Archives house institutional records as well as collections documenting the history of education for people with blindness or deafblindness.

Because the history of disability is the history of people, it is layered with objects, innovation, struggle, emotion, drama, and surprise. The group “People with Disabilities” has always been the largest “minority” group in America. This reality raises one of the most ignored questions in history is: Why is disability seldom a part of the story? This hub gathers together various aspects of the museum that place people who are different, atypical, non-normative, or diverse --and consequently tagged as disabled or impaired --in the story of America, where everyone belongs.

Primary Sources relating to disability history (some emphasis on Toledo/Northern Ohio)

The Disability Visibility Project is an online community dedicated to creating, sharing, and amplifying disability media and culture.

Rooted in Rights tells authentic, accessible stories to challenge stigma and redefine narratives around disability, mental health and chronic illness. As part of Disability Rights Washington, our Seattle-based team of disabled video producers, editors and digital organizers partner with both local coalitions and national advocacy campaigns to fight for concrete changes for our community.

The Disability History Project is a community history project and we welcome your participation. This is an opportunity for disabled people to reclaim our history and determine how we want to define ourselves and our struggles. People with disabilities have an exciting and rich history that should be shared with the world.

Collections of historic digitized materials from the NLM.

The first ever WHO/World Bank World report on disability reviews evidence about the situation of people with disabilities around the world. Following chapters on understanding disability and measuring disability, the report contains topic-specific chapters on health; rehabilitation; assistance and support; enabling environments; education; and employment. Within each chapter, there is a discussion of the barriers confronted, and case studies showing how countries have succeeded in addressing these by promoting good practice. In its final chapter, the report offers nine concrete recommendations for policy and practice which if put in place could lead to real improvements in the lives of people with disability.

The Annual Disability Statistics Compendium, Annual Disability Statistics Supplement, and State Reports for County-level Data are web-based tools that pool disability statistics published by various federal agencies together in one place. When working on legislative and other matters relating to persons with disabilities, the Compendium, Supplement, and State Reports make finding and using disability statistics easier. The Annual Disability Statistics Supplement provides hundreds of additional tables breaking down the content found in the Compendium by age, gender, and race-ethnicity. The State Reports for County-level Data provide county-level statistics for each state complimenting the content found in the Compendium and Supplement.

Catalog of Disability
and Compensation Variables
Browse or search across 11 major datasets for variables related to: disability and health conditions, work and employer characteristics including compensation such as pay and benefits. The catalog provides: variable names, survey questions, response categories and related variables that can be exported into an excel spreadsheet for your use.

Maintained by Cornell University's Institute on Employment and Disability

Our global mission is to promote the rights and advancement of persons with disabilities within a broad mandate provided by the World Programme of Action (1982), Standard Rules (1994) and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006), as well as other relevant human rights and development instruments.

Within the United Nations system, the Focal Point on Disability works to:

Support inter-governmental bodies such as the General Assembly and the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC);
Service the Conference of State Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities;
Promote the international normative framework on disability;
Implement international norms and standards relating to disability at national, regional and international levels; technical cooperation;
Mainstream disability in the development agenda, including the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and other internationally agreed development goals;
Co-chair the United Nations Inter-agency Support Group on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (IASG).

This document compiles a list—by no means complete—of entities that have played an active role in documenting disability in history. Many of the resources and descriptions listed were adapted from The Disability History/Archives Consortium: A Portal to Disability History Collections White Paper. Others have been identified by members of the A&D Section. This document is not an endorsement by either the A&D Section or the SAA.

It’s Our Story is a mixed-media digital history archive that houses the most comprehensive collection of video, photos and documents regarding life with disability in America. The It’s Our Story repository and its contents are testaments to America’s most fundamental values of freedom, autonomy, and independence. The national initiative that has developed from the archive has united hundreds of grassroots advocates, scholars, educators and civic leaders from nearly every state in the United States.