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The present article critically reflects on the use of visual method and specifically emojis when interviewing young students diagnosed with autism. Based on disability studies and visual method, the following questions are discussed: What are the opportunities and limitations of using emojis in the individual interview situation? Which questions are possible to ask – and which are not? The aim of the article is to critically discuss the use of emojis in the individual interview situation. Four challenging phases in which use of emojis is multi-dimensional are illustrated. The phases are: Changed positions in the interview situation. Which questions are possible to ask? Which answers are possible to give? Use of emojis to evaluate the experience of being interviewed. The article highlights how emojis enable the expression of emotional nuances, while also giving rise to some difficulties in asking follow-up questions on a “deeper level”.

Collaborative research, for instance, emancipatory and participatory disability research, arose from critique against the lack of active disabled people's participation in research, which failed to emphasize their personal experiences. By referring to power positions in a qualitative sociological study with young women with an intellectual impairment, and inspired by collaborative research, I discuss the possible methodological and ethical dilemmas found in different research phases, and in relation to the participants. I argue that collaborative research can benefit from being problematized and discussed further regarding the categorization of disability, as well as participation.

The present article is part of a qualitative sociological study with Swedish young women labelled with an intellectual impairment. The aim is to present an exemplification of the social construction of the body, by focusing on how the body is constructed by critical looks. I focus on the experiences of critical looks by analysing the power dimensions (dis)ability, gender, and age. In the article how the body is made visible by being stared at, both to oneself and to others depending on place and interactions, is central, as are what emotions and strategies of resistance staring causes, and the categorical aspects of staring is analysed. To illustrate this complex process of intersections, I add the concept of an ableist environment. Being stared at is part of the young women's everyday life. The critical looks the informants describe may be understood as being different in character: mocking, judgemental, limiting, and desirable.

The present chapter is based on a sociological qualitative study that focuses on disability, identities, and gender, specifically on conceptions of the body and gender among young women labeled as having an intellectual impairment. It deals with the ways in which young women labelled with intellectual impairment construct themselves. The interviewees use four different strategies to make themselves visible as fashionable young women of today, e.g. as non-disabled. The strategies are defined as: marks of resistance, standing out, blending in and female masculinity. These strategies comply with conceptions of fashion, and they are at the same time expressions of different marks of resistance, and ways of striving for independence in the sense of self-determination.

The present article addresses different perspectives on the body in relation to conceptions of normality. It shows how a body perspective can be taken into account from an individual perspective without losing a structural perspective. This is accomplished using the phenomenological conceptions the lived body and the body as situated. This article is part of a sociological qualitative interview study, focusing on disability, identity, and gender, and specifically on conceptions of the body and gender, as experienced by Swedish young women labeled as having an intellectual impairment.