When ethnomethodologist Albert Robillard began to suffer the symptoms of motor-neuron disease, he realized he was a living laboratory for revealing the countless taken-for-granted methods people use to produce being together. Meaning of a Disability is a detailed autobiography of the experiences and trained observations of a university professor who became paralyzed in mid-life.

With his loss of speech, Robillard was forced to communicate through a lipreading system developed by his wife and student assistants. Restricted by this form of communication and his paralysis, he soon learned the...