Out of sight: the experience of disability

The book to accompany the four part Channel 4 series "Out of Sight", being screened in March 1992. It focuses on the experience of disability for the (mainly) young in the period before the emergence of the Welfare State. In the first part of the 20th century more than half a million children, often from poor backgrounds, suffered some form of physical disability and grew up in an age not especially sympathetic to their condition nor understanding of their special needs. Through the moving personal accounts and photographs with which the book is illustrated, the courage and spirit of the disabled shine through as they struggled to overcome prejudice and discrimination as well as physical disability to secure a rightful and valued place in a society sometimes too willing to reject them.