In Working towards Equity, Dustin Galer argues that paid work significantly shaped the experience of disability during the late twentieth century. Using a critical analysis of disability in archival records, personal collections, government publications and a series of interviews, Galer demonstrates how demands for greater access among disabled people for paid employment stimulated the development of a new discourse of disability in Canada. Family advocates helped people living in institutions move out into the community as rehabilitation professionals played an increasingly critical role in the lives of working-age adults with disabilities. Meanwhile, civil rights activists crafted a new consumer-led vision of social and economic integration. Employment was, and remains, a central component in disabled peoples' efforts to become productive, autonomous and financially secure members of Canadian society. Working towards Equity offers new in-depth analysis on rights activism as it relates to employment, sheltered workshops, deinstitutionalization and labour markets in the contemporary context in Canada.

Dustin Galer is a professional historian with a PhD in history from the University of Toronto. He wrote the first book-length history of the Canadian disability rights movement, Working towards Equity, and has published widely on the topic of disability history and labour. He works as a personal historian producing family and corporate history projects and is currently working on his next book about the tragic death of a developmentally disabled man and the complicated quest for justice. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario where he can often be found toiling away in his garden.

Dustin Galer's profile page

• Winner, CAWLS Book Prize awarded by the Canadian Association for Work and Labour Studies

"This is an ambitious and largely successful book. It deserves a wide readership because of its potential to expand the historiography about work, rights and rights movements, and policy (federal and provincial) – in the style of the new disability history – by bringing a disability analysis to bear on these topics."

H-Net Reviews

"The strength of Working towards Equity is the rich narrative the author weaves. Detail surrounding the intricacies and complex relationships among the various disability voices is provided, ensuring that this volume will be well cited for years to come. Even better is the fact that it is grounded in the employment experiences of thirty disabled people over a period of forty years."

<em> BC Studies</em>