DisabilityWorld is a new web-zine dedicated to advancing an exchange of information and research about the international independent living movement of people with disabilities.  The web-zine is the heart of a larger project, IDEAS for the New Millennium, funded in 1999 by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research as a five-year project.

Collaborative Model

The IDEAS project, headed by the World Institute on Disability (WID) based in Oakland, California, is being conducted as a collaborative effort with the participation of other U.S.-based disability groups:

the Independent Living Research Utilization Project (ILRU) of TIRR (The Institute for Rehabilitation and Research), based in Houston, Texas;
the Inter-American Institute on Disability(IID), based in Washington, D.C.;
Rehabilitation International (RI), based in New York, New York; and
Whirlwind Wheelchair International (WWI), based in Berkeley, California.

Content Areas

independent living (WID);
employment (ILRU);
media (RI);
technology & accessibility (WWI); and
governance (WID)

The IID will be responsible for information on these topics in the Spanish language and from Latin America;
Cross-cutting topics are being handled jointly as follows: women with disabilities (WID, IID & RI) and children with disabilities (RI & IID).

Ten Country Focuses

For the first couple years of the project, we will concentrate on collecting and analyzing information on the following 10 countries where we know there is significant activity in the five content areas:

Britain, Germany and Russia;
India, Japan and New Zealand;
Brazil and Nicaragua;
South Africa and Uganda.

We welcome and will include news from other countries, but intend to initially develop full portraits of activity in these countries. Significant disability developments from the USA, especially those with international implications, will also be reported in brief.

Project Activities

The monthly e-zine will be at the center of the project, supplemented by:

annual international experts meetings on one of the five topic areas;
a database of research and other information searchable by topic or country; and
web-based chats on the topical areas, hosted by one or more of the IDEAS partners organizations.

For example, the first experts meeting of the project will be on independent living, organized by the World Institute on Disability, held in Rio de Janeiro within the framework of the RI World Congress in August 2000.

Methods

Our basic approach is that the main collaborating organization will be responsible for a topical area (as outlined above) and for organizing an international experts meeting on the topic during the course of the project. Additionally, reporters are being hired either as topical or country experts to contribute to the webzine. We have not hired all the reporters yet, but at this moment, several have been engaged to report on Japan, India, Britain, New Zealand and Russia, as well as on governance, media and access and technology. We are in contact with prospective writers from Latin America, South Africa and Uganda. We will publish a complete list of topic & country reporters as soon as arrangements are final.

Accessibility Policy

The staff of disabilityworld, which includes both blind and sighted members, have decided that this web site will be made accessible to users of Windows-based browsers and screen readers. In the coming months, as the main articles in disabilityworld become archived in the associated IDEAS database, which will also be public and available on-line, the content of the magazine will also be accessible to Lynx users.

Web-zine Personnel

Co-Editors:
Barbara Duncan (RI), responsible for content in English,
Rosangela Berman-Bieler (IID), responsible for content in Spanish and related to Latin America

Contact Us

---

Copyright © 2000 IDEAS2000. All rights reserved