Disability

• The medical model (1950s) - disability

  • sees disability as a medical problem
  • focuses on limitations
  • “victim-blaming“, the problem lies with the disabled individual rather than with a society that has not met their needs
  • being disabled deviates from the norm
• The social model (1983) - disability

  • society is the disabling factor, rather than the individual
  • disability is socially constructed due to assumptions of norms and abnormalities, eg. buildings which lack accessibility
• Shakespeare (1996) - disability

  • disabled people are socialised into this way of seeing themselves as victim, creating a ‘victim mentality’
  • there are a lack of positive role models in public life and media
  • society pity, avoid, and create awkwardness in interactions with disabled individuals
• Interactionists - disability

  labels interactions between disabled individuals and others as a “master status”, the defining characteristic of the cause of prejudice - being “disabled”
• Gill (1997) - disability

  • polio survivor, became disabled later in life (not born disabled)
  • previously felt sympathy for disabled people, opinions changed when she became disabled herself
• Zola (1982) - disability

  • vocab we use to describe disabled people is borrowed from discriminatory able-bodied society
  • “learned helplessness”, incapable of changing situation
• Murugami (2009) - disability

  • disabled self-identity is based on what they can do rather than what they can’t do
  • barriers are societal and environmental, it is not their own fault