Welcome
Disability Access & Inclusion
The Holy Cross Libraries and the Office of Student Accessibility Services have worked together to compile a list of resources related to topics of disability, access, and inclusion. This guide was created as part of Disability Awareness, Access & Inclusion Week in October 2023 and is now maintained and updated by the Libraries as a continuing resource. This guide includes print and electronic resources available through the Holy Cross Libraries and links to national and community organizations that work to promote accessibility and inclusion.
For questions related to this guide and the resources listed, email libref@holycross.edu.
College of the Holy Cross Office of Student Accessibility Services
The Office of Student Accessibility Services coordinates accommodations for students who self-disclose with disabilities in order to promote equal access to College programs and services. We engage in an interactive process with each student and review requests on a case-by-case basis. The College of the Holy Cross complies with Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, The ADA Amendments Act of 2008, and applicable local, state and federal statutes regarding nondiscrimination against persons with disabilities.
About Disability, Accessibility, and Inclusion
Deaf Gain by Call Number: HV2380 .D425 2014ISBN: 9780816691210Publication Date: 2014-10-15Through their in-depth articulation of Deaf Gain, the contributors to this pathbreaking volume approach deafness as a distinct way of being, one that opens perceptions, perspectives, and insights less common to the majority of hearing persons. By framing deafness in terms of its intellectual, creative, and cultural benefits, Deaf Gain recognizes physical and cognitive difference as vital to human diversity.
Deaf identities: Exploring new frontiers by Call Number: E-BookISBN: 9780190887612Publication Date: 2020Over the past decade, a significant body of work on the topic of deaf identities has emerged. In this volume, Leigh and O'Brien draw from the deaf identities field, bringing together scholars from a wide range of disciplines - anthropology, counseling, education, literary criticism, practical religion, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and deaf studies - to examine deaf identity paradigms.
Demystifying Disability by Call Number: HV3011 .L33 2021ISBN: 9781984858979Publication Date: 2021-09-07A friendly handbook on the important disability issues you need to know about, including: how to appropriately think, talk, and ask about disability; recognizing and avoiding ableism (discrimination toward disabled people); practicing good disability etiquette; ensuring accessibility becomes your standard practice, from everyday communication to planning special events; appreciating disability history and identity; and, identifying and speaking up about disability stereotypes in media.
Disability Pride by Call Number: HV1553 .M3725 2022ISBN: 9780807036457Publication Date: 2022-11-29An eye-opening portrait of the diverse disability community as it is today and how attitudes, activism, and representation have evolved since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
Keywords for Disability Studies by Call Number: HV 1568 .K49 2015ISBN: 9781479841158Publication Date: 2015-08-14Keywords for Disability Studies aims to broaden and define the conceptual framework of disability studies for readers and practitioners in the field and beyond. The volume engages some of the most pressing debates of our time, such as prenatal testing, euthanasia, accessibility in public transportation and the workplace, post-traumatic stress, and questions about the beginning and end of life.
NeuroTribes by Call Number: RC553.A88 S54 2015ISBN: 9781583334676Publication Date: 2015-08-25What is autism? A devastating developmental disorder, a lifelong disability, or a naturally occurring form of cognitive difference akin to certain forms of genius? In truth, it is all of these things and more -- and the future of our society depends on our understanding it.
The Power of Different by Call Number: HV888 .S25 2018ISBN: 9781250060044Publication Date: 2018-03-06In The Power of Different, psychiatrist and bestselling author Gail Saltz examines the latest scientific discoveries, profiles famous geniuses who have been diagnosed with all manner of brain "problems"including learning disabilities, ADD, anxiety, Depression, Bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and Autism and tells the stories of lay individuals to demonstrate how specific deficits in certain areas of the brain are directly associated with the potential for great talent.
Reader's Block by Call Number: QP399 .R83 2022ISBN: 9781503632493Publication Date: 2022-10-04What does the term "reading" mean to you? This alternative history of reading tells the stories of atypical readers and the impact had on their lives by neurological conditions affecting their ability to make sense of the printed word: from dyslexia, hyperlexia, and alexia to synesthesia, hallucinations, and dementia.
Dust in the Blood: A Theology of Life with Depression by Call Number: BV4910.34 .C63 2022ISBN: 9780814685020Publication Date: 2022-01-15Weaving first-person narratives of depression, contemporary theologies of suffering, and ancient biblical tales of the wilderness, especially the story of Hagar, Coblentz argues for and contributes to an expansion of Christian ideas about what depression is, how God relates to it, and how Christians should understand and respond to depression in turn.
Memoirs and Personal Narratives
Being Heumann by Call Number: JC571 .H563 2020ISBN: 9780807019290Publication Date: 2020-02-25One of the most influential disability rights activists in US history tells her personal story of fighting for the right to receive an education, have a job, and just be human.
The Centaur's Wife by Call Number: PR9199.4.L434 C46 2021ISBN: 9780735272859Publication Date: 2021-02-16Amanda Leduc's brilliant, genre-bending and apocalyptic novel, woven with fairy tales of her own devising and replete with both catastrophe and magic, is a vision of what happens when we ignore the natural world and the darker parts of our own natures.
Disability Visibility by Call Number: HV1552.3 .D57 2020ISBN: 9781984899422Publication Date: 2020-06-30A groundbreaking collection of first-person writing on the joys and challenges of the modern disability experience: Disability Visibility brings together the voices of activists, authors, lawyers, politicians, artists, and everyday people whose daily lives are, in the words of playwright Neil Marcus, "an art ... an ingenious way to live."
Haben: The Deafblind woman who conquered Harvard Law by Call Number: KF373.G567 A3 2019ISBN: 9781538728727Publication Date: 2019-08-06Girma grew up with her family in the Eritrean city of Asmara during Eritrea's thirty-year war with Ethiopia. Defining her disability as an opportunity for innovation, she learned non-visual techniques for everything from dancing salsa to handling an electric saw. She developed a text-to-braille communication system that created a new way to connect with people. Pioneering her way through obstacles, Girma graduated from Harvard Law, and now uses her talents to advocate for people with disabilities.
I live a life like yours: A memoir by Call Number: LA2375.N62 G7813 2001ISBN: 9781782276555Publication Date: 2021Jan Grue was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy at the age of three and began using a wheelchair not long after. In this lyrical memoir, he uncovers what it means to have lived, and to continue to live, in a body that the world struggles to accept as normal.
Life of the Mind Interrupted by Call Number: LB2333.2 .P79 2017ISBN: 9781947834057Publication Date: 2017-10-16In these deeply personal, fiery essays, Pryal tells her story of transformation that began the moment she chose to publicly disclose her own mental illness and leave her career in higher education to begin fighting for a better world for people with psychiatric disabilities. The stories she tells are universal: the fear of stigma, the fight for accommodations, and the raw reality of living with mental illness in a world that pushes mental health to the margins.
Normal Sucks: How to live, learn, and thrive outside the lines by Call Number: HV1568 .M65 2019ISBN: 9781250190161Publication Date: 2019-08-13Mooney was a neuro-diverse kid diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD who didn't learn to read until he was twelve. The realization that he wasn't the problem-- the system and the concept of normal were-- saved Mooney's life and fundamentally changed his outlook.
Places I've Taken My Body by Call Number: PS3602.R722354 P53 2020ISBN: 9780892555130Publication Date: 2020-06-02In sixteen intimate essays, poet Molly McCully Brown explores living within and beyond the limits of a body-in her case, one shaped since birth by cerebral palsy, a permanent and often painful movement disorder. In spite of-indeed, in response to-physical constraints, Brown leads a peripatetic life: the essays comprise a vivid travelogue set throughout the United States and Europe, ranging from the rural American South of her childhood to the cobblestoned streets of Bologna, Italy.
Sitting Pretty by Call Number: RC406.P3 T38 2020ISBN: 9780062936790Publication Date: 2020-08-25Growing up as a paralyzed girl during the 90s and early 2000s, Taussig only saw disability depicted as something monstrous, inspirational, or angelic. She longed for more stories that allowed disability to be complex and ordinary, uncomfortable and fine, painful and fulfilling. Here she writes about the rhythms and textures of what it means to live in a body that doesn't fit.
Swimming Against the Tide: True Story of Para Swimmer Madhavi Latha by Call Number: E-BookISBN: 9789391370688Publication Date: 2021"Swimming Against the Tide" is the true story of a sportsperson who challenges her circumstances and physical disability to overcome the odds and emerge a winner, along the way becoming an inspiration to many.
Year of the Tiger by Call Number: RC935.A8 W66 2022ISBN: 9780593315392Publication Date: 2022-09-06Drawing on a collection of original essays, previously published work, conversations, graphics, photos, commissioned art by disabled and Asian American artists, and more, Alice uses her unique talent to share an impressionistic scrapbook of her life as an Asian American disabled activist, community organizer, media maker, and dreamer.
Disability Justice
Black Disability Politics by Call Number: HV1568.2 .S35 2022ISBN: 9781478023258Publication Date: 2022-10-31In Black Disability Politics Sami Schalk explores how issues of disability, broadly construed, have been and continue to be incorporated into Black activism, from the 1970s to the present. In so doing, she establishes a new lineage for disability politics, one that allows the work of contemporary Black disability justice activists to be central.
Care Work by Call Number: E-BookISBN: 9781551527390Publication Date: 2018-10-01In this collection of essays, Lambda Literary Award-winning writer and longtime activist and performance artist Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha explores the politics and realities of disability justice, a movement that centers the lives and leadership of sick and disabled queer, trans, Black, and brown people, with knowledge and gifts for all.
The Future Is Disabled by Call Number: HV1568 .P5337 2022ISBN: 9781551528915Publication Date: 2022-10-04In The Future Is Disabled, Leah Laksmi Piepzna-Samarasinha asks some provocative questions: What if, in the near future, the majority of people will be disabled - and what if that's not a bad thing? And what if disability justice and disabled wisdom are crucial to creating a future in which it's possible to survive fascism, climate change, and pandemics and to bring about liberation?
Accessibility and Education
Beyond the Americans with Disabilities Act by Call Number: LC4813 .B48 2014ISBN: 9780931654909Publication Date: 2014-03-01Beyond the Americans with Disabilities Act is a primer and quick reference guide for higher education professionals who work with students with disabilities, both apparent and hidden. Written for administrators, faculty, and staff, the book provides transferable information that is applicable to any campus.
Crucial Collaborations by Call Number: LC4031 .C78 2024ISBN: 9781948213448Publication Date: 2024-03-01The book introduces and explains the Collaborative Framework--a tool higher education professionals can use to allocate resources and ensure appropriate access and a sense of belonging for students with disabilities.
Disabled Faculty and Staff: Intersecting identities in higher education by Call Number: LB2844.1.H35 D58 2023ISBN: 9780999608951Publication Date: 2023-06-15In this second volume of DISABLED, coeditors Mary Lee Vance, PhD and Elizabeth G. Harrison, PhD have curated a collection of writings by 28 contributing authors who have provided personal narratives of what it is like to 'work while disabled' in higher education.
Culture and Representation
Amputation in literature and film : artificial limbs, prosthetic relations, and the semiotics of "loss" by Call Number: E-BookISBN: 9783030743772Publication Date: 2021Amputation in Literature and Film: Artificial Limbs, Prosthetic Relations, and the Semiotics of Loss explores the many ways in which literature and film have engaged with the subject of amputation. The scholars featured in this volume draw upon a wide variety of texts, both lesser-known and canonical, across historical periods and language traditions to interrogate the intersections of disability studies with social, political, cultural, and philosophical concerns.
Cultures of Representation by Call Number: E-BookISBN: 9780231850964Publication Date: 2016-03-08Cultures of Representation is the first book to explore the cinematic portrayal of disability in films from across the globe. Contributors explore classic and recent works from Belgium, France, Germany, India, Italy, Iran, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Netherlands, Russia, Senegal, and Spain, along with a pair of globally resonant Anglophone films.
Designing Disability by Call Number: E-BookISBN: 9781350004252Publication Date: 2017-12-28"Designing Disability" traces the emergence of an idea and an ideal - physical access for the disabled - through the evolution of the iconic International Symbol of Access (ISA). The book draws on design history, material culture and recent critical disability studies to examine not only the development of a design icon, but also the cultural history surrounding it.
Reframing Disability in Manga by Call Number: NEVINS PN6790.J3 O38 2020ISBN: 9780824889876Publication Date: 2021-02-28Reframing Disability in Manga analyzes popular Japanese manga published from the 1990s to the present that portray the everyday lives of adults and children with disabilities in an ableist society. It focuses on five representative conditions currently classified as shōgai (disabilities) in Japan - deafness, blindness, paraplegia, autism, and gender identity disorder - and explores the complexities and sociocultural issues surrounding each.
Serial Selves by Call Number: NEVINS PN6714 .K64 2019ISBN: 9780813592251Publication Date: 2019-03-15Serial Selves considers how female, queer, disabled, and minority artists use autobiographical comics to make their experiences not only legible, but visible as well. Fusing methods from literary and visual studies, it explores how these artists on the margins challenge both the narrative conventions of autobiography and the norms of pictorial self-representation.
Uncanny Bodies by Call Number: NEVINS PN6714 .U63 2019ISBN: 9780271084749Publication Date: 2019-11-27This collection reveals how the superhero genre, in fusing fantasy with realism, provides a visual forum for engaging with issues of disability and intersectional identity (race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality) and imagines different ways of being in the world.
Scholarly Journals
- Disability & Society
Disability & Society is a disability studies journal providing a focus for debate about such issues as human rights, discrimination, policy and practices. - International Journal of Disability and Social Justice
The International Journal of Disability and Social Justice aims to critique, re-imagine and develop new approaches to social justice for disabled people. They are concerned with critiquing injustice and finding ways to build inclusive environments, technologies and societies. - Journal of Accessibility & Design for All
The aim of Journal of Accessibility and Design for All is to publish theoretical and empirical articles, that contrast and extend existing theories, and build new theories that contribute to the understanding of phenomena related with aspects of universal design and equal opportunities for people with disabilities. - Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability (JPED)
The Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability (JPED) publishes research and contemporary best practices related to disabled college students, college and university disability services offices, disability educators, and disability studies as a field within and lens for the study of higher education institutions. JPED is published by the Association on Higher Education and Disability (AHEAD).
Films and Video Resources
- Born This Way Presents: Deaf Out Loud
Executive produced by Academy Award-winner Marlee Matlin, this new documentary special follows three predominantly deaf families as they raise their children in a hearing world. - Do You Dream in Color?: The Dreams and Aspirations of Four Blind Teenagers
An enlightening and poignant coming of age story that follows the journeys of four courageous blind teenagers as they strive to achieve their dreams: to be a sponsored skateboarder, travel the world, become a rock star and be the first family member to graduate. Their stories shine a proactive light on the social and institutional obstacles faced by people who are blind and what it takes to surmount those barriers.
Winner of an Audience Award at the San Luis Obispo International Film Festival. - Wizard Mode: An Autistic Teenager's Quest to Become World Pinball Champion
In the game of pinball, there is no greater reward than Wizard Mode – a hidden level that is only unlocked when a player completes a series of lightning-speed challenges. Robert Gagno has dedicated most of his life to mastering Wizard Mode, and is now one of the top pinball players in the world. He also happens to have autism. WIZARD MODE, Salazar Film’s first feature documentary, follows Robert as he seeks to balance his quest to become a world pinball champion and his growing real world responsibilities, culminating at the largest pinball tournament in the world, Pinburgh, in Pittsburgh, PA. - You Don't Need Feet to Dance
An astonishing documentary about a man who overcomes his disability one day at a time, Alan Govenar's new film reveals the extraordinary life of African immigrant Sidiki Conde. Sidiki lost the use of his legs to polio at age fourteen. Today, he balances his career as a performing artist with the almost insurmountable obstacles of day-to-day life in New York City. From his fifth-floor walk-up apartment, he traverses down the stairs on his hands and then navigates in his wheelchair through the sidewalks of Manhattan onto buses and into the subway.