ABSTRACT

The self-advocacy movement among young people with learning disabilities has become a force to be reckoned with and is growing stronger all the time. Disabled young people have much in common with other minorities, such as those disadvantaged by poverty, chronic ill-health, old age, membership of an ethnic minority group or culture, or by the interaction of any or all of these with the additional discrimination that arises from gender. Young people leaving school are likely to encounter major obstacles to their participation in society over and above any difficulties arising directly from their disability. Perhaps the biggest single obstacle is the continuous pervasive underestimation of their abilities by society and its representatives and by the public at large. Self-advocates, working as individuals, in small groups and at national and international levels, have fought, and are still fighting, to achieve a number of goals.