Disability Equality
The Equality Act 2010 states that a person has a disability if they have a physical or mental impairment, and the impairment has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on their ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities. The major 2017 report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Being disabled in Britain: a journey less equal, demonstrated that Britain's thirteen million disabled people experience disadvantages in many areas of life, including education, work, standard of living, and participation.
In this section, you'll find information resources relating to disability themes. The resources include books, films, archives, and social media, and they examine disability issues from many perspectives, including history, society, politics, culture, literature, and more.
We hope you find the resources here and on our reading list informative and interesting, and as always, we welcome your suggestions for books and other resources to include.
FOCUS on Mental Health Awareness (Be Well @NCL)
Reading List
Take a look at our EDI Reading List for Disability Equality.
Please get in touch if you have any recommendations to add to this list - whether already available in the Library or not!
Archives and Special Collections
This section highlights digitised and physical archives and special collections at Newcastle University and elsewhere, relating to disability topics. Materials in these archives cover centuries of history, and include images, data, interviews and much more.
- Diary of William Brewis, 1833Contains a contemporary account of a boxing match featuring the British bare-knuckle fighter and English heavyweight champion James Burke (1809 – 1845) who was deaf from infancy. WB/1/1
- Hill (Selima) ArchiveWorking papers and correspondence of poet Selima Hill (b.1945). Selima has Asperger's Syndrome, and she talks about this in her work. Her experiences of feeling in a marginalised group through living with Asperger's features in her archive.
- Trevelyan (Charles Philips) ArchiveContains letters regarding Charles’ daughter’s mental health and her stay and treatment in a mental health institution.
- Bethlem Museum of the Mind archivesThe Bethlem Museum of the Mind focuses on the history of mental healthcare, and you can search its archives online (some of which have been digitised)
- Disability Archive UKThis aims 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.
- Disability History project: 1050 to the present dayOnline resource from Historic England which reveals how disabled people's lives are integral to the heritage around us.
- Mass Observation Online 1937-1967 This link opens in a new windowThis a major resource for British social history from 1937-1967. It contains material generated by the Mass Observation social research organisation, including all the day surveys, diaries and subject directives from 1937-1967, a wide range of themed topic collections, together with other material such as images and essays. We also have access to the Mass Observation 1980s and 1990s database. Read our blog post for more information about this archive.
- Mass Observation Project 1981-2009. This link opens in a new windowThis contains responses to the Mass Observation project in the 1980s,1990s and (NEW!) 2000s, covering political and social themes of the period, plus insights into everyday life. A fascinating insight into late twentieth century Britain. We also have access to the earlier Mass Observation Online database covering 1937-1967. Read our blog post for more information about this resource.
- Oral histories of disability and personal mental healthVarious oral history collections from the British Library, some of which are available online.
- StatistaStatista is a collection of over 1.5 million datasets on a huge range of contemporary topics. If you're looking for data to help you research inequality, it's a great place to start.
- UK Disability History Month archivesResources related to themes from UK Disability History Month events in previous years.
- UK National Archives : researching British disability historyResearch guide compiled by UK National Archives.
- Wellcome Institute LibraryThe Wellcome Library in London has many collections and resources relating to the history of disability. Some have been digitised and available online: you can find them via a catalogue search.