The aim of this study was analysis of the relationship between strength of interpersonal relation-ship and coping strategies in women with spinal cord injury. The study covered 88 women with spinal cord injury. The following research instruments were applied: Coping Orientations to Problems Experienced (COPE) by C.S. Carver, M.F., Scheier and J.K. Weintraub, Polish adaptation by S. Piątek and K. Wrześniewski, and Strength of Interpersonal Relationships by A. Zbieg i A. Słowińska. Statistical relationship between similarity of people in a relationship and coping strategy consisting of drinking alcohol and drugs used by women with spinal cord injury were established.

For many years everyday life has been unquestionably important in the research of scientists from various fields, such as historians, philosophers, sociologists and anthropologists. Ethnographers also deal with the exploration of everyday life, delving into the secrets of everyday life typical of various communities or institutions. They point out that one of the characteristics of everyday life is its dynamic character, because it changes as often as the contexts and aspects of human life. This dependence is clearly shown by the authors' own research, which focused on uncovering one of the most important aspects of everyday life, which are the mutual relations that connect members of a nursing home community. As it turns out, despite numerous reforms, which have covered the principles of functioning of this type of institutions from the 1990s, wanting to change them from the popular pattern of the total institution to the increasingly popular model of the demo-cratic institution, not in all nursing homes it was possible to do so in equal measure. The results of the study provide the basis for reflection that the activity of nursing homes requires many more transformations and is a huge challenge for the coming years.

The issue of social security for people with disabilities has been in the field of interest of Czech re-searchers reforming the social sphere since the beginning of the 1990s. The text is an attempt to present selected issues related to the process of shaping the social security system for people with disabilities in the Czech Republic. The article draws attention to certain ele-ments shaping the atti-tudes of Czech society towards people with disabilities.

The article presents the functional specificity of simultaneous sight and hearing disabilities. Damage to two key senses causes difficulties in all spheres of human life and is a barrier in meeting one's needs. An opportunity to overcome this difficult situation is to promote access to the serv-ices of guides-interpreters. The results of the conducted research confirm that assistance services have a positive impact on the level of functioning of deaf-blind people, thanks to which their qual-ity of life improves. The cognitive goal of the article is to describe the assistantship of guides-interpreters and to present the results of research on the impact of this type of support on the quality of life of deafblind people. The conclusions also have a practical dimension, which is to emphas iz e the importance of as sistant guides-interpreters for the functioning of deaf-blind people and to indicate the importance of including this form of support in social policies regarding disability.

Interpersonal relations with significant Other are extremely important for people with intellec-tual disabilities. That relations construct their adult life because they determine the way of experi-encing and interpreting everyday's difficulties. The aim of the article is to present the result of studies related to people's with moderate intellectual disabilities experiencing and interpreting their relations with significant people. Presented researches were conducted in a qualitative ori-entation which allows using biographical method and narrative interwiew. The analysis of the empirical material shows biographies of people that shows events and situations constructing their lives.

Media discourse of disability and old age obliged not only to reflection on the discourse of socialy important phonomenons and topics, but also on the reasons and conseqences of their mutual apperance in journalistic materials. There are more and more texts in which the old age topic ap-pears together with the questions about the functioning level of the elderly people. The quality of life in an old age is — on the one hand — the biological matter (of the psychophysical state), but — on the other hand — the social matter (of the solitude, support, care, livelihood). The themes of the old age and disability are sometimes identical, particulary when they concern the usament of modern technologies in the improwment of the quality of life of people with disabilities or/and in the late old age. The intersectional feminism was presented in the article as the key research perspective in the area of the interdisciplinary disability studies and, at the same time, as the important theo-retical frame of the disability and old age media discourse. The example of the disability and old age discourse in the selected press texts was based on the areas of the disability and old age inter-section indicated in the article.

The article describes the results of research on the validation of the Kwestionariusz Wpływu na Uczestnictwo i Autonomię (KWUA) (Impact on Participation and Autonomy Questionnaire, IPA). The presented questionnaire is a self-descriptive tool for measuring the autonomy and participa-tion of people with physical disability of various etiology. It involves subjective measurement of autonomy and participation in five dimensions. It is a full adaptation of the tool to the Polish con-text including: the procedure of determining the Polish language version and the verification of psychometric properties: internal reliability, reliability, stability and validity. Satisfactory results of validation studies show that it is a valuable and useful tool to measure perceived autonomy and participation in various areas of daily life among people with physical disabilities.

The article presents the activities of disability rights movement and activists with disabilities fight-ing for the possibility of leading an independent life, for equal opportunities and human rights. In the context of the theory of social movements, civil disobedience and self-organization of people with disabilities, the author shows this fight in the prism of two protests of people with disabilities and their parents that took place in 2014 and 2018 in the Polish Parliament.

Although we can observe a growing interest in the issues of gender in disability studies, there has been little research on femininity in the context of intellectual disability. The author focuses on the origins of femininity presented by female self-advocates with intellectual disabilities. The re-search, whose results were presented in the paper, was conducted in three towns in north-eastern Poland with three focus groups of females who took part in interviews. The participants were 21 women aged of 21-60 with intellectual disabilities. The main research question was: what are the origins femininity from the point of view of women - self-advocates with intellectual disabili-ties? The findings show that... The results, which showed a high level of gender identity of female participants with intellectual disabilities, could be explained by belonging to the groups of self-advocates in which the participants' self-awareness is intentionally developed. The findings show that the interviewees identified two categories of sources of their femininity: biological and social. Two spheres of touching their own femininity were also distinguished: personal and social. Also, facilitators and barriers influencing the women's feminine identity were renowned.

The demographic data shows that Poland, compared to other European countries is relatively young country, face with the issue of population aging. The article presents the issue of dignity of elderly, refers to the broadly understood respect for them, ando to its specific aspect — the sense of self-dignity of seniors. Conducted research shows that neither the sex, nor the age and the domi-cile do not diferentiate statistically the sense of self-dignity of seniors participating in examina-tions. Considering Individual Dimensions measured by KPWG-3 of P. Brudek and S. Steuden it is possible to notice certain differences: the examined elderly women are attaching great significance for creating and sustaining the interpersonal relationship (of Relational Dimension) than examined man-seniors (p <0,05) what contributes to the sense of self-dignity. In the context of age of examined seniors the results indicate that along with the age growth the sense of loss of the sense of self-dignity is growing. The domicile of seniors does not determine the sense of self-dignity.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the intensity of Maternal-Fetal Attachment (MFA) and experience of pregnancy with congenital disorder. Additional aim was to examine which of the selected variables predict the development of the emotional attachment between the woman and fetus in high-risk pregnancies. The study involved 65 child-bearing women with congenial disorders. Data was collected by Fetal Attachment Scale, Pregnancy Experiences Scale and inter-wiew. The analysis showed that women in pregnancies with congenital disorder form a strong emotional bond with the unborn child. However, the most experienced difficulty during preg-nancy is fear of motherhood and focus on fetus and state of health. The way of experiencing preg-nancy is significant for the maternal-fetal attachment.

The author has noticed that although there are mant' similarities between the blind and the par-tially sighted, there are also differences. Meanwhile, even in scientific literature for generał public both groups are treated as identical. Differentiating them is essential for, among other things, a better understanding of the determinants shaping the social identity of the blind and the par-tially sighted. The article presents the basic differences in functioning of visually impaired people and provides and overview of the studies on the subject in question. These studies concern, among other things, such aspects as the sense of otherness, victimisation, self-esteem, self-image, psychosocial functioning, the level of stress and anxiety, the identity crisis stage of development, the sense of the meaning of life, and the experienced support.

Issues of anxiety, including fear of heights, for blind people are an important issue not only in modern education and rehabilitation of blind and visually impaired people. However, despite mant' years of interest in the topic, the problem of the presence of anxiety of height in people who have been blind since birth or early childhood, its nature, and possible symptoms has not been clearly defined to date. A significant number of people with visual disabilities from birth declare no height anxiety, but there are also people who pay attention to having this type of anxiety. Therefore, the article presents reflections on the fear of height in people blind from birth or early childhood and the results of own research conducted on a group of 10 people (5 women and 5 men) based on the individual case method and interwiew technique.

Visual impairment is among the most common conditions in later life. It influences on the inability to perform the basic activities but limits independents, process of thinking and data coding information. The article presents the latest research on cognitive function in the elderly with visual disabilities. The authors drew attention to the cognitive difficulties of patients with cataracts, glaucoma, retinal pigmentosa degeneration, age-related macular degeneration and retinopathia diabetica.

Acquiring visual impairment in senior age results in a number of negative implications in the physical, psychological and social spheres which lead to a decrease of the quality of life. Numer-ous studies have shown a higher mortality rate among seniors who are losing vision. The studies of various patient populations have proved that visual impairment increases the risk of death, both directly and indirectly, through the negative effect it has on the indicators of physical condi-tion and psychological wellbeing. The mechanisms determining this phenomenon have not been sufficiently recognized yet and need further investigations due to the high social significance of the problem.