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.
