disability and identity

• In 1995, the Disability Discrimination Act was passed, giving legal protection and enforceable rights to disabled people.
• The medical model sees disability as a medical problem, focusing on the limitations caused by the impairment. this leads to a

  ‘victim-blaming’ mentality, where the problem lies with the disabled individual, rather than with a society that has not met their needs.

  • Shakespeare - disabled people are socialised into this way of seeing themselves as victims, thus creating a ‘victim mentality’.
• The social model - focuses on the social and physical barriers to

  inclusion that may exist, such as the design of buildings and public spaces that deny access to those with mobility problems. This approach can lead to the view that disability is socially constructed, since it rests on assumptions of what is ‘normal’ or ‘abnormal’.
• • Shakespeare - there are major obstacles to forming a positive disabled identity. Disabled people are often socialised to see themselves as inferior. Also, he says that disabled people are often isolated from one another, so forming a strong, collective identity is difficult.
• The label ‘disabled’ carries with it a stigma that affects all interactions between the disabled person and others, creating what interactionists

  would call a ‘master status’.
• Zola, also disabled through polio - ‘The vocabulary we use to describe ourselves is borrowed from [discriminatory able-bodied] society. We are de-formed, dis-abled, dis-ordered, ab-normal, and, called an in-valid’

  • This could lead to a form of ‘learned helplessness’, describing the way that some disabled people may internalise the idea that they are incapable of changing a situation, and thus fail to take action to help themselves.
• Murugami


  a disabled person has the ability to construct a self-identity that accepts their impairment but is independent of it. So they see themselves as a person first, and see their disability as just one of their characteristics.