Culture, Entertainment and Media

International News

Review of 'Elusive Kinship: Disability and Human Rights in Postcolonial Literature' a book by Christopher Krentz, “a thorough interdisciplinary examination of the importance of highlighting disabled fictional characters in the postcolonial Global South”. (Mar, H-Disability)

Sebastião Salgado releases photography book for the blind. Providing tactile transcriptions of a photo project. (2023, Digital Camera World)

Hatiye Garip’s whimsical comic embraces tactility and audio to create an accessible publication. “With raised spot gloss and an audio bundle, The Land of Uncertainty is paving the way for publications that attend to the needs of blind and low-vision folk.” (2023, It's Nice That)

The Dynamics of Photography and Disability: interview with Jaklin Romine. (2023)

Dungeons & Dragons introduces its first canonically autistic character Designer Makenzie De Armas discusses putting a little bit of herself into the game (2023, Polygon)

It's a cultural fight: Debrief feature with Christian Tasso on using photography to challenge perceptions of difference. (2023, Disability Debrief)

Non Inspirational A collection of interviews about cerebral palsy in fiction. (2023, Julian Gray)

Lego to sell bricks coded with braille to help vision-impaired children read (2023, the Guardian)

Poem-a-Day Guest Editor John Lee Clark discusses selections “from the worlds of disability”. (2023)

Comics beyond sight A highly visual case for blind access – beautifully illustrated questions about how to make visual design of comics accessible. (2023, MIT Technology Reviews)

The disabled villain: why sensitivity reading can’t kill off this ugly trope. “For centuries, fictional narratives have used outer difference to telegraph inner monstrosity. As someone who uses a wheelchair, I’ve learned you can’t just edit out a few slurs or bad words to fix this – it’s often baked deep into the story” (2023, the Guardian)

Am I ugly? a super-cute video of small figures getting around accessibility, assistive tech and stigma. (No visual description, 2023, Sylvanian Drama, TikTok)

Nurse! My pen! Hanif Kureishi’s hospital musings and the art of sickbed writing. (2023, the Guardian)

On (Not) Discovering Disability in the World of Jane Austen. “Disabled characters are present in Austen’s novels, but largely invisible in her cinematic remakes” (2023)

How Can Art Reach Out and Touch Us? A primer on haptic tech innovation and new possibilities for access in dance. (2023, Laurel Lawson)

Disability Poetics a collection of poems and essays by disabled poets:

“Disability poetry resonates for us because it is fundamentally a poetry of liberation. [...] Disability poetics speaks powerfully because it articulates the resistance of bodies and minds to the erasure, commodification, convenience, and disposability articulated all around us and that we struggle against. In this collection, we mean to resist.” (2023, Poetry Foundation)

A Picture of Health: Jo Spence, a Politics of Disability and Illness. A project featuring different artistic explorations. (2023, A Picture of Health)

Being Seen a new book by Elsa Sjunneson. “A Deafblind writer and professor explores how the misrepresentation of disability in books, movies, and TV harms both the disabled community and everyone else.” (2022, Simon and Schuster)

The Group Fighting for Disability Justice in British Museums and Galleries (2022, Timeout)

Curating Access a new book, edited by Amanda Cachia on disability art activism and creative accommodation. (2022, Routledge)

Cripple Punk: The Disabled Young People Smashing Ableism: “Spiked wheelchairs, studs and cigarettes – cpunk is about rejecting society's ‘inspiration porn’ narrative of physical disability.”:

“We need to see more disabled people behaving badly. And no, I don’t mean blind people littering or wheelchair users shoplifting. I mean we need to see more disabled people behaving like everyone else. We need to see more disabled people smoking, drinking and sticking up a middle finger. More disabled people who are angry, bitter and abjectly un-inspirational – because frankly, there are a lot of us. So where have we all been hiding?” (2022, Vice)

Disabled musicians turning up the volume radio show featuring artists with disabilities. (no transcript, 2022, BBC)

Changing the narrative on disability: is representation in books getting better? Article sees increasing representation in children's literature but not “the same commitment to representation in the adult literature sector, where they say disability is still seen as a niche topic.” (2022, the Guardian)

‘Deaf Utopia’ review – Nyle DiMarco’s memoir is enlightening, depending on how (and if) you read it (2022, Limping Chicken)

23 New And Upcoming Novels With Disabled Main Characters (2022, Buzzfeed)

Geelong, an Australian ensemble of disabled actors, wins one of the world’s richest theatre prizes (2022, the Guardian)

A Different Narrative: Text within Disability Art. "Help the Normals". (2022, Disability Arts)

Review of Disability Studies special issue on disability, film and media. A wide ranging set of articles from self-presentation on instagram, radio in Kenya and disability metaphors in Korean news. (2022)

Latest issue of Ability Magazine features the actor Greg Grunberg and articles from around the world. (2022)

Adaptive fashion: the $400bn opportunity to embrace Disability inclusion (2022, MBS Group)

A collection of poems by Disabled and d/Deaf Poets Curated by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. I enjoyed Sick4Sick by torrin a. greathouse, which opens:

“I think my lover’s cane is sexy. The way they walk

like a rainstorm stumbles slow across the landscape.” (2022, Poets.org)

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Ghana

Photojournalist Inspires Deaf Students to Explore Visual Storytelling (Video Feature, Mar, VoA)

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Kenya

Short video feature on Julia Ayen a Refugee artist “proving to the world that disability is not inability” (2022, Citizen TV Kenya)

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South Africa

Athenkosi Kwinana breaks the stigma about Persons Living with Albinism (PLWA) through art (2023, Biz Community)

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Tunisia

Dance show performance embraces diversity to 'break down walls'. (2023, AfricaNews)

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Azerbaijan

The catwalk with a difference: adaptive fashion comes to Azerbaijan. “An enterprising student and a designer want to make attractive clothes that disabled people can wear – and model too” (2022, the Guardian)

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China

This one-woman show by a disabled woman has made my dream come true. “I have always dreamed that one day, someone can bring the most real disabled people, the most real lives, the most real feelings and the most real needs of disabled people to the stage for all the public to see.” (In Chinese, quote via Google Translate, 2023, The Paper)

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India

Please touch: “Museums as well as galleries are displaying tactile panels to make art accessible to people with disabilities.” (Jan, Scroll.in)

Profile of queer disabled artist Ritika Gupta: on the significance of the digital medium for neurodivergent artists and why community networks for disabled artists must thrive (2023, BehanBox)

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Japan

Married manga artists tell story about life with disability “Manga artists Eri Nanato, 43 and Satoshi Kameyama, 41, have brought the issue of adult developmental disorders to the fore via the pages of a manga series that conveys the challenges they face in real life.” (2023, Kyodo News)

Disabled author wins prestigious Japanese literary award Saou Ichikawa, who has a physical disability, won the prestigious Akutagawa literary award her work about a disabled woman's anger and desires. (2023, Kyodo News)

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Kuwait

A Talk with Reema Humood: Multiple Sclerosis and its Literary Representation.

"The love of caretakers who don’t mean to suffocate you, but they do with their worries and fears, and the injustice and discrimination against people like me, rejecting us, excluding us, denying us the right to be…I discovered there was ‘us’ against ‘them’, the sick ones and the healthy ones, each group gazing at each other, afraid. Any attempt at meshing together, at understanding each other, stops and sinks in muddy waters" (2022, Arab Lit)

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Pakistan

Profile of Alishba, an activist and artist. (2022, World Down Syndrome Day)

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Saudi Arabia

Virtual artspace opens new worlds for disabled artists (2023, Arab News)

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Singapore

'I just feel happy': Profile of Fern Wong, a visual artist with Down syndrome who has won several local and international competitions. (Feb, CNA)

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South Korea

In a K-Pop First, Deaf Members Debut as 'Big Ocean' | Be Korea-savvy “They will perform songs in Korean sign language, English sign language and international sign”. (Mar, the Korea Bizwire)

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Sri Lanka

Atrocities of the Civil War Through the Eyes of Artists profile of artists with disabilities. (2022, Ground Views)

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Taiwan

Thematic Exhibition of Artistic Creations by People with Disabilities art-work and promotion of easy-read materials. (2022, Family of Joy Social Welfare Foundation)

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Europe

The European Court of Human Rights declined to condemn France for censuring a video featuring adults and children with Down Syndrome. (2022, ADF International)

Implementing the Right of People with Disabilities to Participate in Cultural Life across Five European Countries: Narratives and Counternarratives. Research in Austria, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and Sweden:

“[This article] contrasts official narratives, which highlight good practices and steps taken to improve access to culture, with counternarratives that reveal a fragmentary approach to cultural participation of persons with disabilities, persisting barriers, limited recognition of artists with disabilities, and the perpetuation of stigma and stereotypes.” (2022, Journal of Human Rights Practice)

A Narrative Literature Review of Barriers and Facilitators to Cultural Participation by People with Disabilities. Covers legislation and policies, funding and services, attitudes, accessibility and gaps in consultation.

"While adopting binding accessibility standards is important, to the extent that this results in a checklist approach to addressing barriers, it is unlikely to be sufficient. This is especially so given that existing guidelines can restrict themselves to addressing particular disability types and that many barriers occur in the realm of attitudes and lack of knowledge of a range of actors and in approaches to education. Moreover, standards alone are unlikely to address the need for support and interaction that seems necessary to facilitate access and participation, particularly for some groups such as people with [intellectual disabilities]." (2022, Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research)

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Spain

The Royal Spanish Academy will urgently evaluate use of the word “disminuido”, diminished, which is currently given as synonymous with “discapacitado”, disabled, or “minusválido”, handicapped, without any comment they are derogatory. (In Spanish, Jan, El Observador)

On the Front Line of a War Over Bullfighting Traditions Opponents of Spain’s comic shows at bullfights by people with dwarfism say they are banned by a new law. But performers say the show must go on. (2023, New York Times)

Spain bans decades-long tradition of ‘dwarf bullfighting’. “Dwarves in Spain have long dressed as firefighters or clowns to chase bulls without killing them, at public spectacles designed to be humorous. The tradition stretches back decades, but has declined in popularity.” (2023, the Guardian)

Exploring world monuments through Spain’s Museum for the Blind. Short video. (2022, Haben Girma)

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United Kingdom

‘I’m done with pretenders’: disabled actors on reclaiming Richard III. (Feb, the Guardian)

Disability in classical music: how can we increase accessibility? “There is small army of instrumentalists, conductors, composers and instrument makers fighting to make the industry genuinely more accessible to professional performers.” (Jan, Classical Music)

Jack Moyse, You and I. Fiona Johnstone reviews an exhibition of photographic works by Jack Moyse, a young artist living with muscular dystrophy. (2023, The Polyphony)

Does the Booker Have an Autism Problem? “This year’s Booker Prize longlist is a sign that, during the past 20 years, the publishing world has advanced and stagnated when it comes to autistic representation.” (2023, Publishers Weekly)

‘I think it’s a new artform’: Chris Fonseca, the man bringing Deaf dance to the mainstream. (2023, the Guardian)

Inside Britain’s only all-wheelchair dance troupe a feature on Propel. (Video, 2023, NBC News)

Representing disability in museums. (2023, The Hunterian Blog)

Barbara Hulme shares a showcase of watercolour portrait paintings titled 'Men's Health' – highlighting their disability/ health stories. (2023, Disability Arts Online)

Unfinish’d sympathy: can literature get over reading disability morally? (2022, the Guardian)

Storytelling and Chronic Illness – An Evolution of Time and Place. (2022)

Being Hybrid A guide to hybrid events for the literature sector. (2022, Spread the Word)

‘Don’t tone it down’ – inside the invasion of British museums by disabled artists. (2022, the Guardian)

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Canada

Disability Desirability Arc Poetry Issue 102 where guest editor Therese Estacion asks: “What do we make of a disabled body or, to use disability justice group Sins Invalid’s term, bodymind that desires? A body that knows all too well how it feels to be told that it has no business wanting for love, wanting for more.” (2023, Arc)

Crip Rave Is the Revolutionary Collective Prioritising Accessibility. “There was the disorientation of the music, but also the vibrations, which left me sensing my pain in a different way ... I left that night with a new relationship to my body.” (2022, RA)

Alt-Text & Ambiguity A Poetic Approach to Image Description by Alex Haagaard and Liz Jackson (2022, Akimbo)

Acting the part: A thematic analysis of the experiences of actors with disabilities. “Many actors experience inadequate accommodations, inaccessible work sites, stigma, and being limited to disability specific roles. As a result, actors with disabilities have implemented strategies to improve their success when faced with social and physical barriers in the industry.” (2022, Canadian Journal of Disability Studies)

#CripRitual exhibition of art exploring disability culture and ritual (2022, #CripRitual)

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Mexico

Arjen Power a Mexican heroine with disability for inclusion in comics. (In Spanish, Feb, Yo También)

Soumaya Museum: art for everyone. (In Spanish, 2023, Yo También)

People with disabilities behind plushie concert craze: “the toys are made by a group of some 400 people with disabilities in a factory in Puebla.” (2022, La Prensa Latina)

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United States

An Instagram-Ready Immersive Museum Uses Braille. But Is It Accessible? “Roy Nachum designed the spectacle-filled Mercer Labs, which he touts as inclusive. But some advocates for blind people say his use of Braille can feel exploitative.” (Mar, New York Times)

9 Books that Center Deaf and Hard of Hearing Characters (Mar, Electric Literature)

How Alien We Seem: On Being Blind and Obsessed with Photography. “M. Leona Godin Considers, Among Other Things, the Enduring Trope of the Blind Pencil Vendor” (Jan, Lithub)

Her Guide Dog Inspired Her Art. “After losing her sight in an accident, Emilie Gossiaux found meaning and art in a bond with her dog, London, celebrated at the Queens Museum.” (2023, New York Times)

How deaf fans of opera can feel the music with Lyric Opera’s new shirt “A pilot program at Lyric Opera of Chicago aims to tailor the opera experience by offering wearable technology to patrons” (2023, Washington Post)

Hear the Dance: Audio Description Comes of Age Recent experiments in describing dance, like the film “Telephone,” approach it not just as an accessibility service but as a space for artistic exploration. (2023, New York Times)

Disrupting Museum Behavior: An Exploration of the Art Institute of Chicago’s “Cripping the Galleries”. (2023, American Alliance of Museums)

Museum Makes Major Acquisition. “The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art announced the acquisition of more than 150 works by 23 artists with developmental disabilities from three Bay Area art centers.” (2023, Disability Scoop)

One custom costume at a time father and son make Halloween accessible to kids with disabilities. (2023, CNN)

Britney Spears' book: The Woman in Me. Review:

‘Anyone looking for starry anecdotes or studio vignettes won’t find them here. Instead, The Woman in Me tells a focused story that makes inarguable the ties between patriarchy and exploitation, and deserves to be read as a cautionary tale and an indictment, not a grab-bag of tabloid revelations. After all Spears has lost, the sharpness of her perspective is a miracle. She repeatedly questions why – whether as a teenager in a crop top “corrupting” the youth, or a 25-year-old getting drunk at the club – she was perceived as “dangerous”. May her truth pose a legitimate threat to the system that exploited her.’ (2023, Guardian)

Stephen King's "Holly" reframes his hero's mental illness “Holly Gibney's anxiety and OCD helps to solve problems, not create them” (2023, Salon)

Comedian Nina G. Is Challenging Stereotypes Of People With Disabilities — One Joke At A Time. (2023, Huffpost)

Disabled Creatives in Comics: Interview with Tee Franklin (2023, Disability Visibility Project)

Dean Strauss Illustrates Disabled Life in Bright, Beautiful Ways “I got into art out of spite.” (2023, Shuttershock)

Deaf rappers who lay down rhymes in sign languages are changing what it means for music to be heard. Dip-hop “signals an independent style grounded in both hip-hop and Deaf culture.” (2023, The Conversation)

Art is at the Heart of Disability Justice “I think the way I decide to live now, which is very different than how I decided to live previously, is to welcome all of myself into my body, and not try to shut down the undesirable parts of myself.” (2023, Narrative Initiative)

Georgia O’Keeffe Made These Works After Going Blind. (2023, ARTnews.com)

“Our Hands”: Reading with DeafBlind Poet John Lee Clark. (2023, Public Books)

Mattel launches first Barbie with Down syndrome to ‘counter social stigma’. (2023, Los Angeles Times)

Performance by Gaelynn Lea a musical welcome to Microsoft's Ability Summit. (2023, MSFT Enable)

A review of the book 'Turn on the Words!: Deaf Audiences, Captions, and the Long Struggle for Access' (2023, H-Net)

How These Sign Language Experts Are Bringing More Diversity to Theater “As productions increasingly include characters and perspectives from a variety of backgrounds, deaf and hearing people who translate the shows for deaf audiences are trying to keep up.” (2023, New York Times)

All Sorts of Secret Treasure Feature on DeafBlind poet John Lee Clark and his debut poetry collection How to Communicate. (2022, Poetry Foundation)

An Art in America edition dedicated to Disability Culture. (2022, Art in America)

Why Beyoncé and Lizzo Changed Same Lyric on Their New Albums. (2022, Time) See also a linguistic discussion of the word and how it is used differently across communities of English-language speakers, and frustrations with holding Black artists to higher standards.

‘Access as an Ethic’: the dancers at Kinetic Light think about “access as an ethic, as an aesthetic, as a practice, as a promise, as a relationship with the audience [...] The disability arts community is really in a moment of vast experimentation.” (2022, NYT)

Mean Baby by Selma Blair review “Written with warmth and candour, the actor’s new memoir chronicles her alcoholism and MS diagnosis – alongside tales of dressing up with Carrie Fisher” (2022, the Guardian)

As Lizzo was called out for ableism, many Black disabled people felt overlooked. (2022, NPR) See also on BBC

Barbie unveils its first-ever doll with hearing aids (2022, CNN)

How The Grammys Got Accessibility Right, And What They Could Have Done Better - An Interview With Lachi (2022, Forbes)

Disability in Theatre: Strategies for Combating Ableism by Meeting Actors’ Access Needs. (2022, On Stage Blog)

Why Music Videos Present A Unique Opportunity For Disability Inclusion (2022, Forbes)

Review of ‘True Biz,’ by Sara Novic (2022, NYT) See also a discussion on Power, Privilege, and Love in a Residential School for Deaf Students (Electric Literature).

Contemplating Beauty in a Disabled Body “My looks don’t fit into classical ideals of order, proportion, symmetry. So what was I looking for in that gallery in Rome?” (2022, New York Times Magazine) An essay by Chloé Cooper Jones, whose book Easy Beauty has just come out. I enjoyed her discussion of the book on longform, sadly no transcript.

Sofía Jirau Makes History as the First Victoria’s Secret Model With Down Syndrome (2022, Glamour)

A New Coalition Amplifies Disability Culture in the Music Industry (2022, NYT)

Disability Justice from A to Z A Coloring Book For Our Communities (2022, Sins Invalid)

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Australia

The dancers with disability exploring sex and love: ‘Once you open the floodgates, it’s pretty interesting’. (Feb, the Guardian)

'I believe deaf people are the best listeners in the world': Just another day as a deaf music critic. (2023, ABC News)

Seeing the story — just another day working as a blind critic (2023, ABC News)

Communicating about Disability in Australia Insights, Challenges and Opportunities. (2023, Frameworks)

‘I don’t care, I know I look good’: Australian dancer Dan Daw on kink, disability and ‘powerful crip joy’. (2023, the Guardian)

Lara Ricote is comedy’s next big thing. She's also deaf. (2023, SBS News)

Artists unmask disabilities in push to break barriers and challenge attitudes around music in Australia. (2023, ABC News)

Revamped national cultural policy includes a national arts and disability plan. (2023, NME)

From homeless and busking to the main stage: Rodney Bell’s wheelchair dance tours Australia | Dance | The Guardian (2022, the Guardian)

Adaptive fashion for people with disability showcased (2022, SBS News)

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New Zealand

Halloween character costumes that are actually scary “Parking Warden Who Doesn’t Believe It’s Your Mobility Permit” and other frightening figures. (2023, The D*List)

Spreading kōrero of disability and music technology (2023, Arts Access Aotearoa)

Stay home club “Making remote portraits of New Zealanders in isolation—using only their phone cameras.” (2022, New Zealand Geographic)

Blind Scrabble master takes on the country's best (2022, Stuff)

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Argentina

The Drummer Who Reminds People That ‘You Can Play Music as You Like’ “Miguel Tomasín, one of the few professional musicians with Down syndrome, has brought attention to the artistic visions of people with developmental disabilities, with his band releasing over 100 albums.” (2022, New York Times)

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Brazil

Guidance for accessibility in museums (In Portuguese, 2023, SISEM-SP )

Dances of Queens Mercedes Baptista and Josy Brasil signs of racism and ableism in Afrobrasilian dance (In Portuguese, 2023, Capacitismes)

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