This is the preface from Politics, Disability and Social Inclusion: People with different abilities in the 21st Century.
In writing this book, I allowed myself to focus on a comforting belief, that is, there might be thousands of people out there who may find my opinions valuable. Was this simply a self-indulgent thought? Whether it was or not it still became the motivating thought behind the completion of this task which, for me, was huge.
No major mainstream Australian publishing house seemed eager to touch a book on disability? Doesn’t this only clarify at a deeper level the importance of such books and the subject matter they present to us? And so after many negative and disheartening attempts with publishers, I finally went to an on-demand publisher based in Europe and the US.
During the period of writing this book, I had no problems bringing my thoughts on politics to the fore and so I found myself happily plunging into the analysis of some of the major issues contributing to the social exclusion of many people with disabilities; that is, people not completely unlike myself. The major problem I had was that my far from adequate typing speed would constantly create problems for me.
Confronting and analysing some of the political issues concerning people with disabilities had its ups and downs. But the exercise was productive in that it reminded me of our potential in society as people with different and, let it be said, in some cases better abilities than those who are able bodied.