Social Disabilities

Some people use wheelchairs to get to and from places. What does that mean? Listeners learn why someone would use a wheelchair and what daily life is like for someone who can't walk.

Rising Tide Car Wash in Parkland, Florida, isn’t average in any way. When Tom D’Eri and his father John bought the location in 2013, it was struggling. Now it’s one of the highest-volume washes in Florida. Its employee retention rate is five times that of its competitors. It has spun off into two additional locations that have been immediately successful, and the business is absurdly profitable.

This handbook covers in its entirety the benefits of social skills coaching, which is a one-on-one skills-based training that addresses an individual's specific difficulties in navigating his/her social environment. Social skills coaching helps develop an individual's ability to more effectively communicate with others.

The Underdogs tells the story of Karen Shirk, felled at age 24 by a neuromuscular disease and facing life as a ventilator-dependent, immobile patient, who was turned down by every service dog agency in the country because she was "too disabled". Her nurse encouraged her to tone down the suicidal thoughts, find a puppy, and raise her own service dog. Karen did this, and Ben, a German shepherd, dragged her back into life.

The field of special education in 2022 has progressed to a point where we have ways to treat and support students with learning issues, and yet we frame so much of the special education process from a deficit-based mindset. Even the word "disability" supports this negative connotation of neurodiversity. This idea book outlines a paradigm for how to view and work with students with diagnoses formed through experience, research, and creativity in a way that supports an ability-forward mindset.

Meg Zucker was born with one finger on each hand, shortened forearms, and one toe on each misshapen foot, caused by a genetic condition called ectrodactyly. She would eventually pass this condition on to her two sons, and, along with her husband, raise them and their adopted daughter, who has her own invisible differences. Born of the family’s hard-won experiences, this book offers invaluable advice on raising confident, empathetic, and resilient children who succeed, not despite but because of their differences.

Imagine if you were to lose your sight? Would it feel like the end of everything worthwhile? There is a way forward. Once you realise that blindness is a word and not a sentence, life takes on a new perspective. There are ways to thrive with vision loss. This book reveals how to turn such a life-challenge into a lifestyle you can fully manage and enjoy.

Autism is often diagnosed during childhood but can also be diagnosed well into adulthood. If you feel you have been misunderstood your whole life, take heart, you are not alone.

Connected at the chest by a band of flesh, Chang and Eng Bunker toured the United States and the world from the 1820s to the 1870s, placing themselves and their extraordinary bodies on exhibit as "freaks of nature". More famously known as the Siamese twins, they eventually settled in rural North Carolina, married two white sisters, became slave owners, and fathered 21 children between them. More than a biography of the twins, this is a study of 19th-century American culture and society that reveals how Americans projected onto the twins their own hopes and fears.

As director of legendary Pommery Champagnes, Philippe Pozzo di Borgo was not generally someone in the habit of asking for help. Then, in 1993, an accident left him a quadriplegic. Passing his days hidden in his Paris townhouse, Philippe found himself the modern equivalent of an “untouchable.” The only person who seemed not to be bothered by Philippe’s condition was someone who had been marginalized his entire life - Abdel, the unemployed, uninhibited immigrant from the outskirts of society who would become Philippe’s caretaker.

Sally Hobart Alexander continues the story of her journey into blindness in this uplifting tale of a life rebuilt and love renewed. Suzanne Toren’s perceptive narration perfectly expresses the emotions of Sally’s sometimes fun, often arduous, and always interesting journey. Also available is Taking Hold, My Journey Into Blindness, which tells the first half of Sally’s story.

An inclusive and empowering manifesto for change in women’s healthcare – exploring the systemic and deep rooted sexism within medicine, and offering actionable ways for women to advocate for ourselves and others and get the diagnosis and treatment we need. Have you ever been to a doctor and felt like you were being fobbed off or ignored? Did they belittle or overlook your concerns about your health? Ever been told you’re just ‘hormonal’? You’re not alone.

In a series of beautifully textured stories, the author takes the listener on a fascinating journey as she travels with Teela, her lively "golden dog", through airports, city streets, and southwest desert landscapes, exploring these surroundings with changed sight. This unusual account of travel will inspire the sighted as well as the blind, offering pointed observations on processes of learning to work with a service animal and on coming to terms with a disability.

Ione Gamble never imagined that entering adulthood would mean being diagnosed with an incurable illness. Watching identity politics become social media fodder from the confines of her sickbed Ione began to pick apart our obsession with self-care, personal branding, productivity and #LivingYourBestLife. Using her experience with disability to cast a fresh gaze on the particularly peculiar cultural moment in which young women find themselves, Poor Little Sick Girls explores the pressures faced—as well as the power of existing as an unacceptable woman in our current era of empowerment.

Learn about children who are blind, their challenges and adaptations, and their similarities with others.

We treat the body as an afterthought, until it no longer can be. Until the pain or the pleasure is too great. Sinéad Gleeson's life has been marked by terrible illness, including leukemia and debilitating arthritis. As a child, she bathed in the springs of Lourdes, ever hopeful that her body would cooperate, ever looking forward to the day when she could take her body for granted. But just as she turns inward to explore her own pain, and then the marvel of recovery, and then the arrival of her greatest joys—falling in love, becoming a mother—she turns her gaze outward.

We’ve all had moments of feeling like we didn’t belong, but imagine being born into a world where fitting in was never an option. Michele Sullivan, who has a rare form of dwarfism, shares how her physical posture taught her the most effective relational posture with others, which helped her become one of the most powerful women in philanthropy.

Ben Mattlin lives a normal, independent life. Why is that interesting? Because Mattlin was born with spinal muscular atrophy, a congenital weakness from which he was expected to die in childhood. Not only did Mattlin live through childhood, he became one of the first students in a wheelchair to attend Harvard, from which he graduated and became a professional writer. His advantage?

This biography is an excellent and accessible introduction for youngsters to learn about one of the world's most influential luminaries. Helen Keller's poignant narrative is beautifully captured in this unforgettable portrait of a woman whose vision for innovation and progress changed America and the world forever.

Public Hostage, Public Ransom starts with the autobiographical story of William Bronston, the activist physician whose early professional California training steels him with a deep moral, professional, and cultural bond to the huge 6,000-person disabled population he encounters incarcerated in Willowbrook State School in Staten Island, NY, on whose behalf he daily battles to humanize and ultimately catalyze a federal class action lawsuit against the state to close the death-making institution.