ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to understand the differing access needs of disabled women, enabling disabled women to be active participants at events such as the Women in Higher Education Annual Conference. For some people their disability may be temporary, but the effects that this experience may have on the individual can be for life. Reappraising the processes of discrimination and obstacles faced by disabled women and men, creates an awareness of the polarization and ambivalence inflicted upon us, thereby shifting the focus away from our functional limitations. Disabled women, however, are lighting back by creating their own poetry, photography, theatre, and humour. The Disability Arts Forum, and the National Disability Forum, after fighting off interference from the non-disabled community, have, for example, encouraged work concerned with the experience of disability — their central aim being to challenge the negative issues surrounding disability.
