The Social Model of Disability
Models are a way of looking at how things work and until the 1970s disability was seen purely as a medical issue – The Medical Model. Any difficulty was seen as relating to the individual disabled person where they were the problem. Disabled people themselves began to question this more and more and in the 1970s, in the USA, a group of disabled people created a new model – The Social Model.
This model argues that impairment and chronic illness exist and they sometimes pose real difficulties for us. However the negative position of disabled people and the discrimination against us are socially created and have little to do with our impairments.
So it is not impairment that make us less suitable to participate in society, instead it is that most people have not been brought up to accept us as we are. Through fear, ignorance and prejudice, barriers and discriminatory practices develop which disable us. This means that impairment is not the cause of disability. We are disabled by the barriers set up by society and which exclude us from participating.
Through the Social Model change is possible by removing the barriers to our inclusion in society. The understanding of this process of disablement empowers us to fight for our human rights.
The Social Model is now widely recognized throughout the USA, UK and Europe not just by disabled people but also by many non-disabled individuals and organizations.
