User:Andjela.kaur/Disability in the United States

THIS IS THE PART OF THE ARTICLE DISABILITY IN THE UNITED STATES: SECTION DISABILITY CULTURE.

Disability Culture

this exists: Disability culture

Definition

U.S. disability historian and disability studies scholar Steven E. Brown helped define the concept of disability culture. He wrote one of the first definitions of disability culture *SHOULD I LINK TO THIS HERE: Disability culture) in the mid-1990s and was the co-founder of the Institute on Disability Culture later that decade. In his memoir Movie Stars and Sensuous Scars: Essays on the Journey from Disability Shame to Disability Pride, Brown described the culture of disability as follows: “People with disabilities have forged a group identity. We share a common history of oppression and a common bond of resilience. We generate art, music, literature, and other expressions of our lives and our culture, infused from our experience of disability. Most importantly, we are proud of ourselves as people with disabilities. We claim our disabilities with pride as part of our identity. . . . We are who we are: we are people with disabilities.” (citation)

As the disability culture movement grew, Brown urged disability scholars and activists to consider definitions of disability culture across the world. He published papers about the many definitions of disability culture and created a repository of the diverse descriptions of disability culture. In one of the first widely circulated papers that attempted to construct a working definition of disability culture, What is Disability Culture?, Brown compiled perspectives from a variety of sources including, arts, personal experiences, parenting, scholarship on disability, all of which recognized disability as a positive experience. He concluded the paper with these words: “It is not our job to fit into mainstream society. Rather it is our destiny to demonstrate to mainstream society that it is to their benefit to figure out that we come attached to our wheelchairs, our ventilators, our canes, our hearing aids, etc. and to receive the benefit of our knowledge and experience mainstream society needs to figure not how we fit in, but how we can be of benefit exactly the way we are. That is disability culture, at least from one person's perspective. What do you think?” (citation).

Over the past thirty decades, Brown has been joined by many U.S. disability scholars, activists, artists, and historians in the effort to define, build and promote disability culture in the Untied States and globally.

Media[edit]
The National Center on Disability and Journalism (NCDJ) provides resources and support to journalists and communications professionals covering disability issues. The center is headquartered at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.

Arts[edit]
There are many government initiatives that support the participation of people with disabilities in arts and cultural programs. Most U.S. state governments include an accessibility coordinator with their state arts agency or regional arts organization. There are a variety of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and non-profit groups that support initiatives for inclusive arts and culture.


 * Office for Accessibility at the National Endowment for the Arts
 * Media Access Group at WGBH WGBH is the Public Television broadcaster for the Boston region. It has three divisions: the Caption Center, Descriptive Video Services (DVS), and the Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM). WGBH pioneered accessible television and video in the U.S.
 * International Center on Deafness and the Arts provides education, training, and arts projects in areas such as theatre, arts festivals, museums, dance, distance learning, and children's programming.

The development of disability arts in the U.S. is also tied to several non-profit organizations such as Creative Growth in Oakland, California, that serves adult artists with developmental, mental and physical disabilities, providing a professional studio environment for artistic development, gallery exhibition and representation and a social atmosphere among peers. Organizations with similar mandates in the Bay Area include Creativity Explored in San Francisco, and NIAD Art Center in Richmond, California.