This innovative book discusses the meaning of inclusion through the exploration of the interactions between disabled and non-disabled people at a community leisure centre. By exploring the nature of this interface, an understanding of how people create potential for both disability and inclusion is revealed. This book takes a very different approach to that of existing texts, which have tended to concentrate mainly on disabled people’s exclusion. The advantage of this new approach is that it adds an extra dimension to our understanding of how discriminatory practice is variously perpetuated and challenged.

Constructions of Disability

is valuable reading for all people who are working towards increased social inclusion for disabled people, including theorists and students of disability studies and learning difficulty, leisure management and disability service providers, and their families. Using a practical case study approach, it explores the impact that social interaction between disabled and non-disabled people can have increasing or decreasing disabled people’s opportunities for inclusion. Examples of both inclusive and discriminatory practice are described in detail, and the positive and negative effects of these actions on the participants are demonstrated and discussed. This insightful book offers a wide range of practical suggestions for the future development of more inclusive theory, policy and practice.