Since the rise of the Self-Advocacy movement in the 1970’s, there has been considerable amount of work done in order to voice intellectually disabled people’s problems and concerns. One difficulty is the methodology used to gain knowledge about how this population experiences life and the techniques related to self-advocacy group facilitation. This year long collaborative action-research used SAS2 (Social Analysis Systems2) methods, which were developed by a team of anthropologists to engage all stakeholders in all steps of the research process. Two problems were raised by intellectually disabled adults who were going through a process of community and residential integration: 1) talking to others about what it is to be intellectually disabled; 2) getting paid employment and keeping it. With these ideas in mind, a series of videos were created in a collaborative perspective using SAS2 methods to give participants a self-modeling experience through research. This communication presents the methods, which were used to identify local problems and the steps in the creation of videos made by intellectually disabled adults, for intellectually disabled adults. The outcomes and limitations of the videography will also be discussed.

1. Action-research
through videos:
Reporting the Anthropological Trajectories of
Intellectually Disabled Adults
in a process of community and residential integration

2. Context
Rise of the self-advocacy movement
Deinstitutionalization in the world’s richer nations
Housing situation in Ottawa
Lessons and pitfalls related to dispersed housing
schemes and clustered housing schemes
LiveWorkPlay OOOT project

3. Research
Questions
What methodology can
we use to gain
knowledge about the
lives of adults with ID?
How can we use videos
to solve the problems
raised by the group?
How can we use videos
as a means for data
collection?

4. Research
Questions
What methodology can
we use to gain
knowledge about the
lives of adults with ID?
How can we use videos
to solve the problems
raised by the group?
How can we use videos
as a means for data
collection?
Talking to others
about ID
Getting paid
employment and
keeping it
PROBLEMS RAISED
BY THE GROUP

5. Methodology
Collaborative action-
research
SAS2 techniques
Ten adults with ID with
the will to succeed
8 months to devote to the
project

6. Videography
1.Making a living with art
2.Playing guitar
3.Surfing the Internet
4.Networking on Facebook
5.Getting around on the bus
6.Making travel plans
7.Making nachos
8.Preparing tea
9.Working at the lost & found

7. The creation
of the videos
Activity Mapping: What are our priorities?
Socratic Wheel: What are we good at, how do we
want to improve?
Stakeholder Identification: Who can we involve?
What are the variables?
‣ difficult, moderate, easy to talk to
‣ depends on us, depends on others
Listing: What sort of videos could we do?
Sorting: Can we find themes?
Ranking: Which videos are most important?
Rating: Where do we start?

8. Outcomes & Limitations
5,000$ for
“Maybe one day”
20,000$ for “Project
Cooking” from Telus
Ottawa Community
Board
More people moving in
condos and more people
getting paid employment
However, participants
cannot solve their
problems on their own...

9. Conclusions
The distinction between self-advocacy and
instructional videos emerged from the experience
The methodology used for this research is deemed
useful for institutions who work with people with
intellectual disabilities
The videos showed a gap between self-advocacy
discourse and action
To think about getting paid employment and to
imagine scenarios is the first step to making these
ideas real.

10. Thank you!