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Homework 2: Disability Deep-Dive

Learning Goals

  • Gain deep background in a disability of your choice
  • Learn to find resources for a particular disability on the Internet.

Project Context

Many people are drawn to accessibility work due to personal connections to people in their lives who have a particular disability. This homework gives you the opportunity to learn as much as you can about a chosen disability and explain that to us in your writeup. We provide a structure for you to use in your writeup which will help guide you towards the important concepts in your understanding of disability.

This is an individual assignment worth 100 points.

Getting Started

In class on Tuesday, September 3, you will choose a disability category for this homework assignment. The available categories are vision, hearing, mobility, speech, cognition, and chronic illness. Note, these are classes of disabilities, not specific disabilities. For example, the vision category includes retinosis pigmentosa, a specific disability with its own unique form of progressive visual impairment. From within your chosen disability class, you may pick any specific disability to write about for your essay.

If you miss class, please contact the instructors ASAP to choose a disability category.

Instructions

Write an essay with information answering the following questions. Each question should have its own header in the document you write.

Note

You must cite all sources in APA style. At the end of the writeup, add a References section with all sources you cited, sorted alphabetically by last name of the first author.

  1. Name of the specific disability.
  2. What is the medical definition of this disability?
  3. What is the definition of this disability from the perspective of the social model of disability? i.e., What barriers in the world are emblematic of this disability?
  4. What functional impairments are common with this disability?
  5. What is the estimated incidence of this disability in the US population and in the world population?
  6. What are the causes of this disability? How and when does an individual acquire this disability?
  7. How has our understanding of this disability changed over time? Start with prehistory and work your way to the modern era.
  8. Identify three famous people who have had this disability. For each person, write down one sentence about how this disability has affected or defined their lives.
  9. Identify three advocacy organizations associated with this disability. For each organization, write down one sentence about how this organization advocates for the disability.
  10. Identify three assistive technologies used by people with this disability and explain how each helps them adapt to the world around them.
  11. What are three current ways to label people with this disability (preferrably used by people with this disability)?
  12. How are people with this disability treated in our culture? Choose any community you like for defining the culture (e.g., USA, CMU, Pennsylvania, the software industry, sports, religions, etc.)
  13. Why did you pick this disability for the homework assignment?

Deliverables

A PDF writeup turned in to Gradescope by Wednesday, September 11, 11:59pm ET.