The Disability and Sexuality Project involved three main activities:

  1. A survey study of social attitudes towards the sexuality of people with physical disabilities in South Africa. We ran the survey during 2016, and received a total of 1990 responses from South Africans from all walks of life. The survey responses indicate that non-disabled people generally view people with physical disabilities as less sexual and having less sexual health rights. You can see some of the results of this survey in our publications.
  2. An interview study, where we asked 14 people with physical disabilities (6 females and 8 males) about their personal views and experiences. We also invited them to take photographs or make drawings of things that represented their experiences about who they were as sexual beings. You can see some of the participants photographs and stories in the Photovoice Study page. We also report on what we learnt in some of our publications.
  3. A public awareness project, where together with some of the 14 people with physical disabilities who participated, we created a series of educational videos and a book about the topic of disability and sexuality which includes photographs and personal stories. Once published, an electronic version of the book will be freely available from the publications page.

On the 27 March 2017, we hosted an interactive event in Cape Town, to showcase the work of the project, which included an exhibition of the photographs. At this event we showed the documentary film (available from the videos page); we had a presentation about the project and we had a performance from the dance company Unmute, featuring dancers with disabilities and able-bodied dancers. Below are some photographs from this event and a short video clip of highlights from the event (note: this video is not subtitled).

Video clip of highlights from the day (not subtitled)                                            

(music on the video: Where Silence is Nonexistent by A Himitsu https://soundcloud.com/a-himitsu. Creative commons – Attribution 3.0 Unported – CC BY 3.0)