Nov 22- Dec 22 - UK Disability History Month

Chris_Scope

Today marks the start of UK Disability History Month (UKDHM), which runs until 22nd December.  UKDHM is an annual event which has been running for seven years, which aims to provide, “a platform to focus on the history of [disabled people’s] struggle for equality and human rights”.

All this month, Scope will be publishing content on our main blog, beginning today with Layla Harding’s post about disabled US President Franklin Roosevelt, entitled ‘Could a disabled person be President or Prime Minister today? Each week we’ll be posting up a new blog written by a young disabled person, throwing the spotlight on a specific historical figure or disability issue. You can keep up with all this content on the UKDHM 2016 section of our website.

Here on the community we’ll also be having discussions, guest posts and polls relating to disability and history, and we hope you'll get involved.

Disability and Language

This year’s theme is ‘disability and language’, so we’d love to hear your stories, opinions and ideas regarding this, or any other historical topic relating to disability.

Do you feel the language used to describe disabled people has changed over recent decades? How have attitudes changed? Do you think that disability is covered satisfactorily by mainstream history, and if not what impact might this have on attitudes today? Are there any particular disabled people in history that you look up to? Let us know in the comments below, or feel free to start a new discussion on the topic of your choice.