Hi Dale,

Tina is right. It is extremely difficult to limit the definitions of disability and impairment. You will end up in a 'rabbit hole' with so many exists and turns that you lose the focus of what you are trying to do.

But from a PhD perspective, your supervisors are right to suggest you limit your research to people with vision impairments. It makes it more manageable for a PhD and stops you from going off on tangents. The fact you have a sight impairment makes it even more relevant because you have personal experience.

Limiting your area means that you can really focus down and unpick huge areas of policy, you can also do international policy comparisons and even do a discourse analysis of different policies.

Or you could engage with qualitative research; an ethnography or narrative study with people who are sight impaired and see if policy is rhetoric, or if it omits areas that are important for people with sight impairments.

What you perhaps need to do is have a read around the existing research and decide what the research question may be and this will sharpen your focus. If you feel that you are not really interested in the area then it is the time to pick another area. Advice is keep the area as small and tightly focused as possible, that way you become the expert in the field, and it is manageable. It is easy to become overwhelmed with a PhD because it is too ambitious a project.

Hope this helps,

Jan

On 27 June 2012 12:33, Tina Minkowitz <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Hi Dale,

It concerns me that you are talking about "limiting the definition of disability" rather than about limiting the scope of your paper. I believe also that limiting the scope of your paper to exclude mental disabilities may be unwittingly falling into discrimination. Could you say more about why you think that the distinction between mental and physical disabilities is a useful way to narrow the scope? People with mental disabilities are often the most discriminated against in law, and are also unjustly excluded from the definition of disability in many countries, so that excluding this group from the research on anti-discrimination law would perpetuate its exclusion more broadly.

Interestingly, it may be that all disability can be experienced in physical/ sensory/ mental/ intellectual and other dimensions. As I read in the report of a training seminar of people with "psychosocial" disabilities, the leader presented it in this way with a resulting rich discussion.

Best wishes,

Tina Minkowitz, Esq.
Center for the Human Rights of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry
www.chrusp.org
[log in to unmask]

International Representative
World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry
www.wnusp.net

On Jun 27, 2012, at 2:16 AM, Dale Reardon wrote:

Hi,

I am blind myself and undertaking some PhD research into anti-discrimination law in Australia – perhaps an international comparison as well.

My supervisors have suggested that I confine the research to vision impairment disability but I am concerned that may be too narrow.

I have thought of confining the research to physical disabilities – drawing a distinction from mental impairments, acquired head injuries etc. Hence I would cover people in wheelchairs, blindness, deafness – the physical disabilities.

Can the definition of disability be limited easily to physical disabilities?  Are there some disabilities that I haven’t considered that could fall in both categories?

Thanks for ideas and discussion.

Dale.

Dale Reardon

Phone:  03 62867105  Mobile: 0420 277457

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Dr Janine Owens

Course Director MSc Social Sciences and Oral Health,

Lecturer in Disability and Health,

Academic Unit of Public Health,

School of Clinical Dentistry,

University of Sheffield,

Claremont Crescent,

Sheffield

S10 2TA

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This Disability-Research Discussion list is managed by the Centre for Disability Studies at the University of Leeds (www.leeds.ac.uk/disability-studies).