‘She Types with Her Toes’: Examining Experiences and Representations of Polio Disability Through the British Polio Fellowship Newsletter, ‘ The Bulletin’ , 1963–1973

Polio, an infectious disease which causes a spectrum of paralytic disability, is often viewed through a public health lens. This article foregrounds the voices and enduring lived realities of polio-disabled people, which have been historiographically oversimplified and overlooked, through The Bulletin, the newsletter of the British Polio Fellowship. It argues that The Bulletin presented experiences of ‘life going on' and representations of ‘overcoming', with the aim of constructing and projecting a polio-disabled identity, which was markedly positive, especially for an acquired disability, based upon idealised characteristics of determination, hard work, and tenacity. This article examines differences in experiences and representations based upon socialised and embodied factors, including age, level of paralysis, and gender. It also identifies limitations within The Bulletin which, despite its constructive and emulative intention, sometimes conformed with regressive gender stereotypes, particularly around caregiving, and perpetuated hyper-idealised ‘supercrip’ narratives of overcoming, demonstrating the complexity of positive representational agency.