Social Model of Disability
According to the social model, the problems faced by disabled people are caused not so much by their medical conditions, but by the social environment. The model says that we should solve these problems by changing society rather than curing disabled people. In the social model, the medical conditions disabled people have are called impairments, whereas the social oppression faced by people with impairments is called ‘disability’.
The social model has been very important in the history of disability activism because it points out that disabled people’s problems are social issues and not just individual medical tragedies, but it does have a few flaws. First, impairments can cause problems, too, for instance, some are painful, and some disabled people do want to have their impairments cured. Second, impairment might be socially constructed rather than purely biological, for example, we probably wouldn’t think of dyslexia as an impairment in a society without widespread literacy. Third, some theorists question whether we need a distinction between impairment and disability, either because it makes our theories too complicated or because it’s difficult to distinguish between the biological and social aspects of disabled people’s experience.
defined by Lysette Chaproniere
Lysette Chaproniere - sher/her
Lysette Chaproniere
Lysette Chaproniere has a PhD in philosophy from the University of Glasgow. In her thesis, she explored the relationship between disability and human enhancement technology, that is, the sorts of technologies we might use to significantly increase our physical, cognitive and other abilities, or lengthen the human lifespan. After her PhD, she worked as part of a research group that produced a policy paper on the use of virtual reality in education, where she was involved in researching the challenges and opportunities of VR for disabled students.