There is little doubt that Disability Studies should be rooted in the work of disabled people and their organisations. An understanding of history is vital if we are to engage with the present and influence the future. But all too often we have little or no knowledge of the concerns and insights of those who went before.
The aim of the Disability Archive UK is to provide disabled people, students and scholars with an interest in this and related fields, access to the writings of those disability activists, writers and allies whose work may no longer be easily accessible in the public domain. It is hoped that the documents available via the Archive will help to inform current and future debates on disability and related issues. The Archive will be periodically expanded to include other material as and when it becomes available.
Colin Barnes
Files and articles may be freely downloaded and reproduced in other formats for those without access to a computer.
However, files may NOT be downloaded and reproduced in any format for commercial purposes without the express permission of the author or authors concerned. Furthermore, files may not be transferred to any website that charges a fee for user access. Finally, the entire Disability Archive UK must not be linked to other websites as a mirror file for ease of local use without prior consultation with the archive administrator.
By entering the Archive you undertake to abide by these conditions.
We are in the process of a major redesign of the Archive, which will move to a new location and provide many new features. The existing Archive will remain for some time in transition but will not be updated with new documents.
When you enter the old Archive you will be able to search and browse lists of documents by author, keyword or title. Alternatively, you can use the following Google search engine for simple queries (search tip: use " " for phrases). The new Archive will have alternative format options.
All the documents in the Archive are in Adobe Acrobat PDF format. You can download the free Acrobat Reader and find out about access options from here.
If you use the search engine above you can select to view HTML versions of your results instead of PDF documents.
Alternatively, to obtain an HTML text version of any PDF visit the Adobe access tools website.
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