Disability Discrimination
Disability discrimination refers to the unfair treatment of individuals based on their physical or mental impairments. This can manifest in various forms, such as exclusion from opportunities, unequal access to resources, or negative attitudes and stereotypes. It is a violation of human rights and can have significant social, economic, and psychological impacts on those affected.
5 Key excerpts on "Disability Discrimination"
eBook - ePub- Alice Hall(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...In disciplinary terms, disability had traditionally been the preserve of medicine, psychology, and social work. In the 1980s and 1990s, however, scholars in sociology, social policy, education, cultural studies and the humanities began to draw on recent campaigns and civil rights paradigms in order to put forward an alternative model of disability. Many explicitly defined themselves in opposition to a medical model in which disability was understood as a deficit residing in the individual; they refused to see disability as a pathology or to treat it as a problem that is necessarily in need of cure, rehabilitation or concealment. Instead, activists and scholars put forward a social model, sometimes called the “social-constructionist” model, of disability. This model emphasised the public, structural aspects of disability and highlighted the status of people with disabilities as a historically oppressed group. The social model makes a key distinction between “impairment” and “disability”, summarised by UPIAS in 1976 as: Impairment : Lacking part or all of a limb, or having a defective limb, organ, or mechanism of the body. Disability : The disadvantage or restriction of activity caused by a contemporary social organisation which takes no or little account of people who have physical impairments and thus excludes them from participation in the mainstream of social activities. (Barnes and Mercer 11) Under this model, first proposed by Irving Kenneth Zola, impairment is a functional limitation (Davis “Crips Strike Back: The Rise of Disability Studies” 506). Disability, by contrast, is created through a social process: through the relationship between an individual with an impairment and the society in which they live. Society “disables” individuals by excluding or discriminating against them and creating affective, sensory, cognitive or architectural barriers...
eBook - ePubDisability and International Development
A Guide for Students and Practitioners
- David Cobley(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Disability is something imposed on top of our impairments by the way we are unnecessarily isolated and excluded from participation in society. Disabled people are therefore an oppressed group in society. (UPIAS, 1976, pp. 3–4) The statement goes on to draw a clear distinction between disability and impairment: Social model distinction between impairment and disability thus we define impairment as lacking all or part of a limb, or having a defective limb, organism or mechanism of the body and disability as the disadvantage or restriction of activity caused by a contemporary social organisation which takes little or no account of people who have physical impairments and thus excludes them from participation in the mainstream of social activities. (UPIAS, 1976, p. 14) This definition, which was later widened to include sensory and intellectual impairments (Barnes, 1998), implies that society creates disability in two ways. Firstly, the structures of society, including families, communities, physical infrastructure, the economy and the political system, are not designed to fully accommodate people with certain physical and/or mental characteristics. 3 Secondly, society ‘excludes’ people with impairments through discriminatory attitudes, systems and practices. 4 In the early 1980s, this radical new way of conceptualising disability, encapsulated in the UPIAS document, gave rise to a feeling of optimism among disabled people that was captured by Allan Sutherland (1981, p. 1): p.12 Over the last few years, a new, more uncompromising mood has been springing up among people with disabilities...
eBook - ePub- David Johnstone(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...It is also increasingly evident that, despite political rhetoric to the contrary, ‘social disadvantage’ has come to be associated with accusations of new forms of deviancy. Some forms of socially inappropriate behaviour are now akin to some of the former stigma associated with disablement. The socially disadvantaged as the new disabled – cases to be treated rather than individuals with rights – is still rather fanciful but it is interesting to see how the shift in liberal tolerance of the ‘other’ has moved away from fear of the body, to fear of fear itself. It is only recently that commentators have begun to question if the very services set up to help establish a better quality of life may not instead be helping to create the problems they were designed to resolve. Bureaucratic assessment procedures and the perpetuation of segregated and residential facilities have in the past denied people the right to live where they choose. The conjunction of disability, community provision for disabled people and the philosophy of inclusive living is crucial here; particularly in terms of the realisation of individual potential and the affirmative model alluded to by Swain and French (2000) and Johnstone (1995). Summary In this chapter Disability Studies is discussed as a multidisciplinary subject area that sets out to explore both the private and collective experiences of disabled people. The differences between the labels of disability, impairment and handicap are outlined and critically analysed. The strongly medical definitions that are associated with the individual ‘tragedy’ of an impairment – e.g. chronic loss, pain, loss of status – is compared with the more politicised social construction of disability. The contrasts between these two simple models is emphasised...
eBook - ePubMeeting the Needs of Children with Disabilities
Families and Professionals Facing the Challenge Together
- Helen K. Warner, Helen K. Warner(Authors)
- 2007(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...They imply that it is the individual’s impairment rather than society’s attitude or willingness to accept diversity that inhibits his or her ability to overcome some of the challenges disability presents. These definitions could be said to reflect the medical model of disability. The social model of disability moves away from defining a disabled person by his or her inherent deficiencies, and proposes that it is society that disables people by its lack of provision for their needs, negative assumptions and the erection of ‘disabling barriers’ (Swain et al. 1997). A disabled sociologist has claimed, that ‘disability is socially produced’ (Oliver 1992). This perspective is shared by others and has led to the development of an alternative definition of disability: The disadvantage or restriction of activity caused by a contemporary social organisation which takes little or no account of people who have physical impairments and thus excludes them from participation in the mainstream of social activities. (UPIAS 1976:3–4) This definition, proposed by the Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation, overturns conventional notions by suggesting that no individual is disabled except by the society in which he or she lives. Such an approach is reinforced by the enormously varied interpretations different world cultures place upon disabled members of their communities; in Martha’s Vineyard, for example, the result of a high proportion of children born congenitally deaf was the acquisition by the whole community of sign language in addition to spoken English – not the segregation and disabling of those affected (Groce cited in Barnes et al. 1999:16). It is true that ‘disability is not measles’ (Rioux and Bach 1994), but from a practical standpoint it is necessary to find a word that identifies those people for whom the whole of society – including the healthcare professions – needs to make extraordinary provision in order to support their enablement needs...
eBook - ePubThe Ethics of Health Care Rationing
An Introduction
- Greg Bognar, Iwao Hirose(Authors)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...They would agree that people with disabilities do often have worse lives all things considered, but not because of any shortfall in their health-related quality of life. Rather, their worse lives are the result of the prejudice, stigma, and injustice they have to face. This idea is an extreme form of the view called the social model of disability. In its less extreme forms, social models of disability emphasize that the disadvantages faced by people with disabilities have two sources: those that are caused by a physical or cognitive impairment (e.g. the inability to walk) and those that are the result of the social environment (e.g. the lack of wheelchair access to buildings and public transportation). These versions of the social model are useful by calling our attention to the fact that the disadvantages associated with disabilities are seldom the result of a medical impairment only, and societies can and should do more to lessen them. But the social model does not fit all disabilities equally well. As we have already mentioned, opponents of cost-effectiveness analysis tend to take a broad view of what counts as a disability. It is undeniable that the disadvantages associated with blindness or deafness are in part socially imposed (deafness would hardly be noticed if everyone was fluent in sign language). But it’s far less plausible to hold that the disadvantages associated with asthma or allergies are socially imposed. At the end of the day, it is more useful to think about some disabilities in terms of the social model, but not all of them. In some cases, a medical model is more appropriate. But for the extreme view, disabilities are mere differences. A person who is disabled and a person who is not will not differ in terms of health-related quality of life as long as the only difference between these two people is the presence or absence of the disability...
