Nursery World - Disability bias brought to book

A new project to increase the representation of disabled people in children's books is to be launched by Scope, the UK's leading national disability organisation working with cerebral palsy. 'In the Picture' is a three-year project targeting inequality in children's literature by introducing young disabled characters in mainstream books.

'In the Picture' is a three-year project targeting inequality in children's literature by introducing young disabled characters in mainstream books.

Even though there are 60,000 young disabled children in the UK, people with a disability are rarely represented in books.

Scope says that this reinforces their sense of exclusion and denies them valuable opportunities to learn about themselves and their disability, which can be frustrating for both the children and their parents.

In 2003 a mini-survey by Scope of 35 families with disabled children found that all expressed frustration about the lack of pictures of disabled children in children's literature.

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