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As Canada moves toward the passage of a federal statute assuring access and inclusion for disabled persons, inevitable comparisons arise between the statutory environments for people with disabilities in Canada and the USA. In previous research, we have used daily time use as a macro indicator of the degree of integration of people with disabilities into the wider society. If statutory protection of disabled persons is effective, activity participation should be similar between persons with and without disabilities in jurisdictions that are favorable to full participation. This paper provides the analysis of national survey data on time use in the United States and Canada for 2010. It shows that the dissimilarity of time use by persons with and without disabilities is smaller for Canadians than for Americans. This finding shows that disabled Canadians are more integrated into their wider society than disabled Americans. Paid work is one activity where Canadians and Americans with and without disabilities are most dissimilar. Regression analysis of time spent in paid work indicates that, with demographic and economic descriptors held constant, the American residency does not promote an advantage in paid work which is a key indicator of integration. This casts doubt on the effectiveness of statutory protections for persons with disabilities.

Disability policy is currently receiving more attention than it has in the past 35 years. How have disability studies researchers participated in these processes, providing the results of their research to ensure the best possible evidence-based policy? This paper reviews the literature on barriers to knowledge translation from disability studies researchers to policy-makers, as well as the incorporating the recommendations of a high-level expert panel of experienced policy makers in disability portfolios. The principal barriers identified are: awareness of the policy process, awareness of government's agenda, timing of information, format of the message, and commitment to the relationship. The panel offers five recommendations to address these barriers.

Primary care has been ideally characterized as the medical home for all citizens, and yet recent data shows that approximately 6% do not have a family physician, and only 17.5% of family practices are open to new patients. Given acknowledged shortages of family physicians, this research asks the question: Do people with disabilities have particular difficulty finding a family physician? Health Care Connect (HCC) is a government-funded agency in Ontario Canada, designed to "help Ontarians who are without a family health care provider to find one". Using data from HCC, supplemented by interviews with HCC staff, the study explores the average wait time for patients with disabilities to be linked with a primary care physician, and the challenges faced by agency staff in doing so. The study found that disabled registrants with the program are only slightly disadvantaged in terms of wait times to find a family physician, and success rates are ultimately comparable; however, agency staff report that there are a number of significant challenges associated with placing disabled patients.

Background: The Namibian disability policy of 1997 has not been reviewed for about 20 years, which has raised concerns with persons with disabilities and stakeholders in the fields of disability and rehabilitation. In March 2017, the government publicised its intention to review the policy. Thus, this study's purpose was to generate evidence that can contribute to the development of a more current disability policy that will promote occupational justice.Objectives: The aim of the study was to develop an alternative disability policy option for Namibia and to present outcomes and trade-offs using a policy analysis approach while applying the occupational justice framework to gather evidence.Method: A qualitative research design and Bardach's eightfold path approach to policy analysis were used. Critical disability theory provided the theoretical framework. The occupational justice framework was the conceptual framework for the study. Evidence from preceding phases of this study and appropriate literature was utilised to construct possible disability policy alternatives in Namibia, set evaluative criteria, project outcomes and confront trade-offs.Results: Three main disability policy alternatives emerged: access policy, support policy and universal coverage policy. Access policy had the fewest trade-offs, and the support policy had the most trade-offs in the Namibian context. Access policy was projected to foster occupational participation among persons with disabilities.Conclusion: Results have implications for selecting disability policy alternatives that promote occupational participation and justice among persons with disabilities in Namibia. Furthermore, the study has implications for advancing the practice of occupational justice in disability policy formulation.

Disability is defined in terms of activity limitation. We propose using daily time use data as a macro indicator of the degree of integration of people with disabilities into the wider society. If activity patterns of disabled persons are becoming more similar to those of the general population, this indicates a reduction in activity limitation and suggests opportunity and social integration are increasing. Decreasing similarity of activity patterns would indicate a failure of policies promoting integration. Data on daily activities were drawn from Statistics Canada General Social Survey files for the cycles focusing on time use for 1992 and 2010. Canada-wide there has been a convergence of the activities of disabled and non-disabled persons of about 13 percent over the period examined. Convergence has been slightly greater for disabled women than men. The major source of convergence for disabled women has been a very large increase in paid work time as compared with disabled men. Our results are consistent with the proposition that public policy on disability is succeeding, but the attribution of activity convergence to policy and program interventions would require a great deal of additional research.

AbstractThe World Report on Disability addresses the education of students with disabilities and recommends that institutional transformation is needed to facilitate inclusive education. The success of inclusive education depends largely on a country's commitment to adopting appropriate legislation, developing policies, and providing adequate funding for implementation. The Republic of Ghana's policies include children with "nonsevere special education needs" in mainstream schools. The authors examine the definition of disability employed in Ghana's policies to assess whether students with intellectual and developmental disabilities are eligible to benefit from these provisions. Ghanaian government and relevant disability‐based organizations' documents related to disability and education were identified and examined as to how the policies support inclusion. The definitions were reviewed via the use of a biomedical or social perspective of disability. Of seven policy documents reviewed, three defined disability and the definitions reflected the biomedical perspective of disability. In the absence of definitions of disability in the majority of the Ghanaian policy documents reviewed, it is difficult to determine which children and with what types of disability will qualify to benefit from their provisions.

Background  This paper introduces the Assimilation, Integration, Marginalization, Segregation (AIMS) interview, a new measure of community integration (defined as acculturation) and reports validation data supporting the use of AIMS with individuals with developmental disabilities.Methods  Caregivers acted as informants for 66 adults with moderate‐to‐mild developmental disabilities. All participants were living in the community.Results  The data gathered using AIMS provide evidence of sound psychometric properties including content, concurrent and construct validity. AIMS data for participants with developmental disabilities indicated that integration efforts have been relatively successful in the medical, dental, housing, social and community domains; however, education, employment, volunteer and spiritual activity require attention.Conclusions  In addition to use as a research tool and outcome measure, AIMS can be used to inform service delivery by providing information regarding the supports available to individuals with disabilities in a number of domains.