Disability

The comics representation of disability spans the modern history of the medium, reflecting popular preconceptions and prejudices of the disabled in a given era. Disability refers to a common aspect of living embodied existence centered on a physical and/or cognitive difference(s) as well as the social, cultural, architectural, and political responses to said difference(s). Often referred to as the largest minority both globally (with upwards of eight hundred million worldwide) and in the US (with 20 percent of the population, or some sixty million), the disabled remain among the most disadvantaged, stigmatized, and misunderstood groups. This despite their significant social progress in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, most prominently in landmark legislation such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (1990) and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006; Goodley 2011).