The Disability Information & Resource Centre welcomes you to the History of Disability in SA website. This website was made possible by a grant from Community Benefit SA which was received in 2006 to fund the establishment of the project.
December 15, 2008 – Major Site Update and relocation.
History site was renewed and various aspects updated to coincide with moving the site onto a different hosting platform to increase speed and managibility.
- Underlying theme structure changed for better managability without effecting layout, look or usability.
- Method for retreiving and disaplaying images was changed giving speed increase on image loads.
- Lightbox support on images replaced static browsing
- Dynamic header images taken from the history flickr photo stream, updated every hour.
- Improved accessibility with a one-column, non-css machine readable layout.
- Tag management incorporated into WP integrated system.
- Better use of url modification due to platform being used.
September 21, 2007 – History Site Update.
History v2 incorporates a lot of the features to enable participation in the site, including:
- search function
- comments on every article
- tags on each article linking to other resources
- inclusion of images relevant to what’s being viewed
- enhanced image viewing
- faster page loading of images
- improved topics page linking to tags
- rss feeds
Special thanks to Trent Gardner for his efforts in bringing the revised site to life.
June 28, 2007 – History Site goes live.
Tribute goes to Neil Lillecrapp, director of DIRC 1990 – 2007 and Janet Williams, information coordinator of DIRC 1995 – 2006 who instigated the project and through their persistence obtained the grant to undertake this journey. On Friday 23 June 2006 the Hon Jay Weatherill MP Minister for Disability launched the “History of Disability SA” project.
The project includes the history of disability in South Australia since settlement in 1836. Over the past 170 years much has changed in the lives of people with a disability. Much, however, has remained the same. DIRC has created interactive WebPages that explores and records this history.
This project records the experiences of people with a disability in South Australia. People now have the opportunity to describe their experience of living with a disability and the changes that have occurred within their lifetime. These stories will provide a lasting legacy for all South Australians.
When gathering the information for the project we decided to use the language of the period therefore highlighting the way people with disability were seen for example “The home for Incurables”. You will notice as the year’s progress so has the way people’s abilities were highlighted and language changed.
Thanks to the State Library of South Australia and the History Trust of South Australia for providing some of the photographs appearing on this website.
A special thanks goes to the hardworking and dedicated staff and volunteers of the Disability Information & Resource Centre with particular mention of Doug Lyall, David Wallace, Zdravko Stojkoski, Phil McLeod and Elizabeth Jardine who made the project plan into reality.
Sandy Puddy
Director
