Flagship course · Gender and social
Nothing About Us Without Us: Disability, Justice & Development
Put disability at the centre of development practice, from rights and data to programmes that reach disabled people.
Start module 1What you will be able to do
- Move from the medical model to the social model and a rights frame under the CRPD and India's RPwD Act 2016.
- Count disabled people in your data with the Washington Group questions.
- Design education, work, health and disaster programmes that include disabled people, with attention to gender, caste and poverty.
About this course
Rights, Barriers and Inclusive Development in South Asia
A course on disability for development practitioners. Move from the social model and the CRPD to counting disability, dismantling barriers, intersectionality, and disability-inclusive programming, grounded in the disability justice movement and the realities of South Asia. Built with disabled people as well as about them.
- Curated Readings
- South Asia Focus
- Practitioner-Focused
Disability Inclusion 101
Disability-Inclusive MEL Lab
Disability Lexicon
Course Notes · PDF ₹350
Reading list
AI Study Companion Soon
Why study disability, justice & development?
An estimated 1 in 6 people (over a billion worldwide, and tens of millions in India alone) live with a disability, making disabled people the world's largest minority. Yet disability is still treated as a niche "welfare" issue rather than a mainstream question of rights, poverty and justice. This course puts it where it belongs, at the centre of development.
Disability and poverty reinforce each other. Barriers to school, work, health and services push disabled people into poverty; poverty raises the risk of disability and deepens its consequences. Break that cycle and you reach some of the most excluded people in any programme, which is exactly why the Sustainable Development Goals pledge to "leave no one behind." Start with the foundations in Disability Inclusion 101.
Rights and justice
Move from the medical model to the social model and a rights frame, the CRPD and India's RPwD Act 2016, where disability is about barriers to remove and nobody needs fixing.
Count and include
Learn to see disabled people in your data with the Washington Group questions, and to design programmes (education, work, health, DRR) that reach and include them.
South Asian & intersectional
Grounded in the region's disability movements and law, and attentive to how disability meets gender, caste and poverty, because a Deaf Dalit woman's barriers are not the sum of separate parts.
"Nothing about us without us." The rallying principle of the global disability rights movement
Assess yourself: disability fundamentals
Six auto-graded questions spanning the course: models, rights and law, counting disability, the twin-track approach, universal design, and participation. Pick an answer and check it; each explains the reasoning. Nothing is stored and there's no sign-in.
Practise the material & continue learning
Every flagship course is part of a wider open-source learning network. The cards below cross-link this course with hands-on labs, AI study companions, the 101 Series, book summaries, reference handouts, live dojos, and Pro Studio tools.
A one-page interactive version of the model this course builds on, with six Indian outcomes drawn as stacks of barriers. Read it as a primer before Module 1 or as a refresher after.
A NotebookLM AI study companion for this course is being prepared: ask the material questions, get topic summaries, and generate study aids at your own pace.
- Coming soon
Free foundational primers that pair well with this flagship:
171 interactive reading companions covering development economics, public policy and related fields, with key concepts and field application notes:
84 print-optimised handouts across 10 tracks: methods, ethics, frameworks, lexicons, quick-reference cards.
56 bi-weekly dojo sessions in the South Asian dev-practitioner cohort: case clinics, paper discussions, live Q&A.
11 Pro Studio tools plus 1:1 coaching, cohort access, and certificates. Sliding-scale pricing.