ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses how people with dementia, together with family carers, negotiate notions of normalcy via their dress practices. It identifies how disabled children's lives become frequently eclipsed by the tyranny of the norm and by the everyday and implicit, but powerful, stigmatisation and discrimination of people with disabilities. The book explains how young people with cerebral palsy participating in a qualitative study in the North-East of England embody, conform to, and/or resist notions of normalcy and difference. It focuses on young adults with learning disabilities in the US who are in the process of attempting to transition from high school to adulthood. The book charts Helen's story a disabled feminist activist living in Australia who had a childhood diagnosis of polio, to consider what constitutes a good life.
