Accessible America: A History of Disability and Design (Crip, 2)

Whether you’re among the 20-25 percent of disabled US populace or not, this is the guide you need to understand the past, present and future of disability from urban design to social ableism. It gives you ideas of issues as well as how you can help improve safe accessible disability legal protections, health care needs, transit, housing and more for yourself, loved ones, coworkers, neighbors, community members. FWIW the author is a great person, so buy this book!

I have been disabled for 30 years. This book offers a unique look at how the Independent Living movement got started. It didn't just appear. So many people fought hard to make wheelchairs and other equipment available to us so that disabled people could live as independently as possible in their own communities. Polio and war injuries were the driving force to ensure Americans did not have to be segregated in institutions to live.

Good content but some key commissions to be corrected in a later edition

“Accessible America”, despite covering what could be considered a somewhat dry subject, is both an informative and engaging look at the history of accessibility efforts in the United States for individuals with disabilities, from the time just after WWII up through the present.Today it’s easy to forget (or to perhaps to have never known) that sidewalk curbs used to not be wheelchair friendly, that parking spaces for persons with disabilities used to not exist, and that most homes and businesses were at one time highly unaccommodating to those with mobility limitations. Even as recently as the 1980’s a great many perfectly-abled people in the majority were known to gripe about the government spending money to better accommodate those with disabilities. My own grandfather used to refer to disabled parking spaces, often sitting empty in an era of unaccomodating vehicles, as a waste of a perfectly good parking space. A stroke that left him partially paralyzed changed his mind on that topic, but there are some people who even today retain his earlier cynical outlook.It was interesting to me to read of events I was otherwise unaware of, such as the years-ahead activity in the city of Berkeley to expand accessibility, as well as modern commercial products purposely incorporating more accessible design features.I was provided with an advanced reading copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review. As someone who myself has some mobility limitations, I went into reading the book ready to call it out if anything rang false, uniformative, or poorly researched. But in the end it has no such flaws, and is a rather good, well-written, enjoyable book. Recommended.

Accessible America is an incredibly informative history of accessibility design in the United States. Williamson's history begins around World War II and ends in modern times. I must note here that her book is largely focused on those who are either paralyzed or missing limbs. Whether this is because disability discourse discluded other disabilities or whether Williamson herself chose to only focus on this subset of disabilities is not clearly explained. That said, the history seems rather thorough. Another reviewer noted that Willamson uses "disabled people" and "people with disabilities" interchangeably. This is true; it's up for you to decide how much you champion people-first language. A note on personal taste- Accessible America is a very dry book. This is pretty much to be expected from NYU Press, but I thought I'd point it out. Overall, it's a good book, but I'd reserve it for those who have a vested interest in the subject. Those who only want to gain general knowledge may want to steer clear of this one.****Thank you, NetGalley and NYU Press for the advanced reader copy.

This book provides a very good history on the history of disability and design primarily since World War II. While the focus is on artificial limbs, the author does delve into the evolving changes in society in regards to how we view and interact with the disabled. The book is well written and researched and makes an excellent teaching guide on the history of disability and design.I recommend this book for anyone who has an interest in the history of the development of artificial limbs.I received a free Kindle copy of Accessible America by Bess Williamson courtesy of Net Galley and NYU Press, the publisher. It was with the understanding that I would post a review on Net Galley, Goodreads, Amazon and my fiction book review blog. I also posted it to my Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google Plus pages.I requested this book as the description sounded interesting and it was a subject that I had not read about. This is the first book by the author that I have read.