Volume 12 REVIEW OF DISABILITY STUDIES: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL Issue 2&3 ​ ​ Review of Disability Studies: An International Journal Volume 12, Issue 2&3 Copyright 2016 Table of Contents Editorial Old and Disabled ­ Disabled and Old…………………………………..…………………...p. 3 ​ Megan Conway, PhD, Editor Forum Disability and Aging: International Perspectives……………………………..…………..p. 3 ​ Katie Aubrecht, PhD, Forums Editor, Tamara Krawchenko, PhD, Co­Guest Editor Research Articles Aging and Disability: The Paradoxical Positions of the Chronological Life Course….....p. 11 ​ Amanda Grenier, Meredith Griffin, Colleen McGrath Canada Securing Personal Input From Individuals Aging with Intellectual Disability: Do Differing Methodologies Produce Equivalent Information?................................................................p.28 ​ Stuart Wark, Miranda Cannon­Vanry, Marie Knox, Marie Pamenter, Rafat Hussain, Matthew Janicki, Chez Leggatt­Cook, Meaghan Edwards, Trevor Parmenter. Australia To Include or Not to Include Them? Realities, Challenges and Resistance to the Participation of People with Disabilities in Seniors’ Organizations……………..……….p. 49 ​ Emile Raymond and Nadine Lacroix Canada Compulsory Youthfulness: Intersections of Ableism and Ageism in “Successful Aging” Discourses………………………………………………………………………............…….p. 70 ​ Hailee M. Gibbons USA Coverage of Aging Well of Individuals Aging with a Disability in Canadian Newspapers: A Content Analysis……………………………………………………………...……………..p. 89 ​ Gregor Wolbring and Bushra Abdullah Canada Page 1 Volume 12 REVIEW OF DISABILITY STUDIES: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL Issue 2&3 ​ ​ “My Body Feels Old”: Seniors’ Discursive Constructions of Aging­as­Disabling……....p.107 ​ Yvonne R. Teems USA ‘No Longer Disabled’ ­ Reflections on a Transitional Process Between Disability and Aging in Switzerland……………………………………………………………………………….p.122 ​ Francesca Rickli Switzerland The Becoming Subject of Dementia………………………………………………...……...p.137 ​ Katie Aubrecht and Janice Keefe Canada Notes From the Field Working Group: “ Reframing Interventions in Mathematics Education: Critical Perspectives”…………………………………………………………………...……......…..p.155 ​ James Sheldon USA Disability Studies Dissertation Abstracts……………………………………..…....……...p.155 ​ Page 2 Volume 12 REVIEW OF DISABILITY STUDIES: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL Issue 2&3 ​ ​ Editorial Old and Disabled ­ Disabled and Old Megan A. Conway, Ph.D. RDS Editor I was born old, or so I sometimes tell myself. Bad eyes. Bad ears. Bad hips. Creaky joints. When faced with people who don’t seem to comprehend the meaning of the words, “Please speak up, I am hard of hearing,” I find myself explaining, “It’s just like with your grandmother. Pretend I am your hard of hearing grandmother and you’ll be fine.” “Ooooooh,” the light dawns and, yes, they do speak louder, and also treat me like I am feeble minded. You know. Old. A generation of once boogying Baby Boomers is getting old and they don’t want the music to stop. The little reading glasses are popping out of pockets with an apologetic cough and a dismissive, “You know how it is.” Advertisements are everywhere for “invisible hearing aids” with photos of smiling sort of older looking people playing golf or laughing with their sort of older looking spouse over a bottle of wine. Don’t call it a “disability” because it can be fixed. I wish I could go back to school and become an orthopedic surgeon specializing in hip replacement surgery. Or plastic surgery. Or any field designed to make old people look/feel/act younger. Fund my active retirement, you know? The irony of the anti­aging movement is that in some ways it has benefited people with disabilities. Those state­of­the­art hearing aids, large smart phone screens and “mainstream” surgeries benefit us too. But in other ways this movement has hurt us deeply. The stigma of disability grows more pervasive by the day. Trying to forge an alliance with an older generation who spends its time running from the inevitable ravages of time seems fruitless. Our only hope is that the generation who gave us the Free Love movement and the Civil Rights movement will also give us the Love Your Age Movement. Let your grey hair flow and your hearing aids show... But we are getting older too. People who have lived with a disability for years now find that age and its new crop of disabilities demand a new examination of their strategies for living and self­identity. As a born­disabled I am quite comfortable with my identity as a disabled person. You wouldn’t have to pay me to get me to stand up in a crowded room and shout, “Disabled people rule!” But a couple of years ago my husband, god knows he regrets it now, took a photo of the top of my head because I wouldn’t believe him when he told me my hair was going grey. Let us just say that a significant amount of our family’s income is now going to a very expensive hair salon. No way am I going grey. That would make me look old. Page 3 Volume 12 REVIEW OF DISABILITY STUDIES: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL Issue 2&3 ​ ​ Editorial Disability and Aging: International Perspectives Katie Aubrecht, PhD & Tamara Krawchenko, PhD “Empirically, we need to remember these facts: barring sudden death, those who are aging and those who have a disability can be only artificially separated at a particular moment in time. Or except for the possibility of sudden death, everyone with a disability will age, and everyone who is aging will acquire one or more disabilities” (Zola, 1989, p. 6). ​ “Rather than merely read old age as disability, or disability as akin to old age, it is crucial to consider how an older person’s body read as having a disability is different from a younger person’s body read as having a disability. Similarly, it is crucial to consider how an older person’s body read as having a disability is different from an older person’s body read as not having a disability” (Chivers, 2011, p. 22). Population aging is taking place in nearly all countries across the world. A 2015 report by the United Nations suggests that globally, the number of people aged 60 and over is expected to double between now and 2050. Presently, this phenomenon is most pronounced in developed regions, but is increasingly an issue for developing countries (Kudo, Mutisya, & Nagao, 2015). On the one hand, global population aging is celebrated as an overcoming story, which confirms culture’s triumph over nature. This perspective is illustrated in the U.S. State Department and National Institute on Aging’s 2007 publication, Why Population Aging Matters: A Global Perspective, which opens with the assertion, “Global aging is a success story. People today are living longer and generally healthier lives. This represents the triumph of public health, medical advancement, and economic development over disease and injury, which have constrained human life expectancy for thousands of years” (2007, p. 4). At the same time, aging populations are also routinely represented in terms of a social problem, a demographic crisis, and an omen of an apocalyptic future (Gee, 2002). The dominant narrative suggests that left unchecked, population aging undermines the sustainability of health systems and economies; appropriately managed and monitored, it represents an unparalleled opportunity for countries’ development. Whether this Janus­faced approach to understanding population aging points to triumph or ruin depends in large part on how the relationship between disability and aging is defined. At times, the relation between disability and aging appears clear and unambiguous; as in research and policy reports that show a direct relation between population aging and increases in the prevalence of disability within countries (Chen et al., 2016; Statistics Canada, 2013). This approach is animated by the assumption that if populations continue to age at the current rate, the Page 4 Volume 12 REVIEW OF DISABILITY STUDIES: AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL Issue 2&3 ​ ​ absolute number of persons with disabilities can also be expected to increase; in part, because age brings changes in health and functionality. However, there is also a growing body of literature within research and policy that recognizes that prevalence varies by age, as well as by gender, sex, race, ethnicity, culture, geographic region, and by the nature of impairment (Warner & Brown, 2011; WHO, 2015). This work emphasizes the diversity of aging, and calls for policy initiatives that are responsive to the complexities of aging with and into disability, in place of policies that include disability and aging under one umbrella (Priestly & Rabiee, 2002; Putnam, 2007; Zarb & Oliver, 1993). Rather than focus exclusively on incapacity and functionality, this approach calls for consideration of disabling social structures and barriers. Within current aging­related research and policy, the relationship between disability and aging is often oversimplified and underdeveloped (Chivers, 2013; Cook & Halsall, 2012; Putnam, 2007). Reductive understandings of disability and aging have consequences for how older disabled adults are understood and treated (Stone, 2003). Despite empirical evidence that suggests otherwise (Woods et al., 2016), disability is regularly assumed to be a product of unsuccessful aging (Martin et al., 2015), and aging as an obstacle to living well with a disability (Gilleard & Higgs, 2013). This special issue of the Review of Disability Studies: An International Journal (RDS) includes eight original articles that analyze how disability and aging appear within research and policy