Many histories of people with learning disabilities focus on segregation. But
although in the 19th and early 20th centuries there was a push to move them into asylums, that never affected the majority. Most lived outside such institutions and had to work. Historians haven't looked much at lives in the community – yet that represented most people with learning disabilities.
My research covered most of the 20th century, until its closing decades saw major economic changes caused by deindustrialisation and the rise of new forms of work associated with computers, and new expectations of school qualifications. Those things had a real impact on the lives of people with learning disabilities, increasingly cutting them out
