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The United Nations (UN) states,
In all societies of the world there are still obstacles preventing persons with disabilities from exercising their rights and freedoms and making it difficult for them to participate fully in the activities of their societies. It is the responsibility of States to take appropriate action to remove such obstacles (UN, 1993, para. 15).
In recent years, there has been a move to follow the UN’s recommendation of dismantling the obstacles (also referred to as barriers or negative environmental factors) that limit the participation of people with various health conditions in society. To date, most of the emphasis in this area has been on people with physical disorders. As Kagan and LeBlanc (2002, p. 155) report, “While rights to physical access in the form of wheelchair ramps and accessible facilities are now taken for granted in many parts of the world, the right to communicative access is often not considered in the same light.” Why are the rights of people with communication disorders ignored? The present inquiry contributes to redressing this inequity. The research aim was to explore the environmental factors that hinder or support the community participation of adults with the communication disorder of aphasia.

Aphasia is a communication disorder caused by a stroke or other damage to the language centres of the brain. Eighteen per cent of stroke survivors have chronic aphasia (Pedersen, Jorgensen, Nakayama, Raaschou, & Olsen, 1995). It affects a person’s ability to talk, understand, read, write, and/or use numbers. In spite of these impairments, adults with aphasia are still competent individuals. Communication has been described as the “currency” through which life is lived (Kagan & Gailey, 1993). The consequences of aphasia, therefore, reach far beyond its effects on the person’s expressive and receptive language skills. As one research participant stated, “Before I had the stroke...you could do what...