Working with persons with intellectual disability through self-advocacy

Abstract

In a crowd, in a street and in most community settings, persons with intellectual disability are conspicuous and absent at the same time. They are conspicuous because having a cognitive impairment is often (though not always) accompanied by particular physical features that mark a person as someone with an intellectual disability and because, in turn, the label ‘intellectual disability’ unfortunately still evokes very negative connotations. They are absent because persons with intellectual disability still encounter significant hurdles in their bid to be active participants in their community ‘on an equal basis with others’ as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (United Nations 2006) requires. Working with persons with intellectual disability therefore entails striving towards the removal of disabling barriers and towards enabling them to be accepted for who they are.