In 2011, I was commissioned to write Extraordinary Lives, a 148-page book of interviews with 15 disabled people whose personal stories reflect the way in which life for disabled people has changed in Ireland. Beginning in 1960, an era in which many people with disabilities lived ‘behind closed doors’ in family homes or institutions, the book tells the story of the emergence of the independent living movement and Paralympic sport. The book was launched by Myles Dungan, and writing in The Irish Times, Sylvia Thompson said it offered “huge insight into the changes in the personal and public lives of those with a physical disability in the past 50 years”.
