This July, UC Irvine Libraries are excited to celebrate Disability Pride Month by calling attention to all the resources that document and elevate the voices and contributions of people with disabilities.* This guide highlights select resources available through the Libraries that focus on disability justice, lived experiences, and the creative and intellectual work of the community. Unless they specify a UC Irvine login, the materials listed below are available to the public year-round, at no cost.

For research help with disability studies, contact Interdisciplinary Studies Librarian Melissa Beuoy at melissa.beuoy@uci.edu or visit guides.lib.uci.edu for a complete list of Libraries research guides.

Archival Collections

Two collections within the University Archive include materials related to disability history and culture:

• Disability Services Center Records (University of California, Irvine), 1997–2020 shares the history of UC Irvine’s Disability Services Center via annual reports, handbooks, brochures, and an album featuring students and staff.
• Ruth C. Lert Dance Library and Archive, 1831–1994 is a multimedia collection of 20th-century dance history, with particular attention to dance therapy and movement for people with disabilities.

Contact Special Collections and Archives at spcoll@uci.edu or 949-824-3947 for more information.

Online Resources

• Disability Pride Month films on Kanopy (requires UC Irvine login)
• Disability documentaries on Docuseek (requires UC Irvine login)
• Celebrating One and All: Disability Pride Research Guide

Recent Acquisitions

• Addressing Racism and Ableism in the Classroom and Teacher Education: Case Studies of Special Education Teachers of Color (2026), by Saili S. Kulkarni, presents five case studies to examine the intersections of racism and ableism across K-12 classrooms, with implications for teacher education programs.
• Being Understood: Deaf Interpreters, Embodied Language and Relationality (2025), by Kristin Snoddon, outlines theoretical and methodological approaches to analyzing deaf people’s experiences of understanding and being understood.
• Disability as a Boundary Object: Combining Inclusivity, Value and Therapy (2025), by Per Solvang, proposes a new integrative framework for understanding disability that bridges social justice movements, welfare systems, and medical approaches, drawing on boundary object theory to reconcile competing models of disability.
• Healing Ableism: Stories about Disability and Religious Life (2026), by Darla Schumm, blends candid storytelling, cultural critique, and theory to reflect on the experiences of people with disabilities in religious communities and organizations.
• An Independent Man: Ed Roberts and the Fight for Disability Rights (2025), by Scot Danforth, is the first biography of Ed Roberts, chronicling how his radical vision of equality and his founding of the Center for Independent Living helped lay the groundwork for the Americans with Disabilities Act.
• Progress from the Margins: Human Rights and Disability Internationalism Since the 1960s (2026), by Paul van Tright, traces the unexpected paths by which international recognition of disability human rights emerged, showing that it is not a story of linear progress but a decades-long series of discontinuous advances.
• Stories on Disability Through Our Voices: Born This Way (2025), by Yoon Joo Lee, integrates the discipline of disability studies with the lived experiences of Korean women with visible disabilities.
• Taking Video Out of the Game: A Game Developer’s Guide to Total Blind Accessibility (2025), by Brandon Cole, breaks down how a developer might make a game accessible to the totally blind, even the largest, most complex games.
• Unbound: Notes from a Reluctant Disability Activist (2025), by Ben Mattlin, collects personal and political essays chronicling the author’s life with spinal muscular atrophy and his gradual emergence as a disability activist and public intellectual.

Diversity of UC Irvine Libraries’ Collections

UC Irvine Libraries collect materials in all formats to support the university’s research, teaching, and public service mission.

We believe it is crucial that our collections reflect the diversity of our students, faculty, staff, and larger Orange County community. Thus, we are making an effort to collect materials that consider the needs and perspectives of historically underrepresented, marginalized, and oppressed groups. For more information, please refer to our Diversity Statement and Plan.

*The acceptability of language and how people with disabilities self-identify continuously evolves over time. Although current usage may differ, this article retains the original names of each resource to provide historical context.