• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.56 no.4
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• pp.597-618
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• 2010

This paper discusses American disability theater's representations of disability identity and disability identity politics. Dramatists John Belluso and Lynn Manning, among others, present characters with disabilities who experience oppressions at multiple, interlocking levels of domination on the basis of disability, race, and ethnicity. In Manning's Shoot, the black, blind hero iterates episodes in which he experienced discrimination and insults in encounters with whites who used derogatory racist words or belittled him and with some school children who taunted him for just being blind. This play, as in Manning's solo performance, Weights, presents narratives of a blind person traversing multiple locations of oppression in "a long litany of losses" in a white-dominated and ableist society. Belluso's Gretty Good Time similarly weaves together stories of disabled women, Gretty and Hideko, who bond together to resist the dominant ideology that reduces them into titillating commodities of mass consumption. Hideko's story serves the two-fold function of both affirming the specificity of her individual experience as an ethnic other and espousing the communal experience of stigmatization she shares with other disabled women like Gretty. In these plays, the intersection of the identity categories of disability, race, and ethnicity highlights the diversity of the body and the fluidity of boundaries, foregounding the specificity of disabled bodies, while at the same time overthrowing the hierarchical binarism between disabled and "normal" bodies.

• Journal of The Korea Institute of Healthcare Architecture
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.45-54
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• 2012

The Act of Disability Discrimination and Rights Restriction was enacted in 2008 states that all services including cultural and artistic activities should be fair and easily accessible for disabled. The aim of this study was to determine how to improve the facilities and services for the disabled in Theater and provide complementary guidelines for amenities designed for people with disabled. The conclusions identified through this study are as follows: 1) It should be installed pedestrian safe passage so that visitors could access from the entrance of the ground to the seat in the theater. 2) Disabled seats install in a position to Emergency evacuation for people with disabilities, and it is recommended that general seats are placed side by side with Disabled seats. 3) It is analyzed services for the visually impaired and hearing impaired are very poor. Therefore assistive devices and human services should be provided to the visually impaired and hearing impaired. 4) People with disabilities can participate in the show as the performers, so it should be provided reasonable accommodations such as access to the stage.

• Korean Institute of Interior Design Journal
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.72-80
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• 2007

Due to the recent Law on facilities Improvement in public performance facilities, equal access to the need of cultural satisfaction and the standards of facilities for people with disabilities are to be assessed. The aim of this study was to determine how to improve the facilities for disabled individuals and provide complementary guidelines for amenities designed for people with disabilities based on a comparative analysis of the disability codes in Korea, Japan, USA, Australia and Canada as well as a field observation. The results suggest the need for improved guidelines in terms of accessibility and accessible seating, which are summarized as follows: (1) The facility standards need to be complemented and clarified in terms of a detailed description, (2) regarding facilities for accessible seating, fall prevention handrails should be lowered to a height within the range of vision of the individual (3) The purpose and user's manual for theater and cultural facilities as well as detailed dimensional requirements need to be restated, and (4) an improvement in accessible seating in theaters and cultural facilities is needed. The purpose of the this study is to show an arrangement of a fundamental judgement and a ground data which can be complemented in planning a public performance facilities for the people with disabilities.