Because of the difference footing of these two fields there is a difference in how the fields have developed. Disability Studies has often hung closer to the idea of aspiring to be a more entrenched academic field where Critical Disability Studies, more focused with troubling the structure of academia has moved to become a more self-reflexive field often leading to a disrupted and not always easily identifiable disciplinary canon. 

Differences in Field Development between DS and CDS

Price notes that Disability Justice is often cited as a key framework in Disability Studies and Critical Disability Studies often without much thought by the programs within academia that are claiming to do Disability Justice work. Price holds that while Critical Disability Studies, Disability Studies and Disability Justice can overlap, that the Disability Justice movement is and has always been separate from academia. Price doesn't mean by this that there are no Disability Justice activists that are affiliated with universities or that DS and CDS programs cannot uphold the values of Disability Justice, but that while DS programs are primarily situated within academe and meant to benefit people within academia, Disability Justice is primarily situated within communities that are not sponsored by or considered within academia. 

Disability Justice and (Critical) Disability Studies

Disability studies is based around the premise that if the built environment was made more accessible and that accessibility was enforced through a legal system, that indequities that create disability would lessen to the possible point of disability disappearing as a form of embodiment. Disability Studies is focused around the social model.

Whereas, Critical Disability Studies is more centered around examining a political-relational model of disability that understands disability as a contestable and transformable category that has been created by larger political and historical forces - a political/relational model of disability, and more pointedly understanding how the category of disability both plays out in individual's lives while also critiquing and examining the system that created the model of disability.

University of Wisconsin - Madison

Critical Disability Studies has the word critical in the title to tie it to other disciplines in critical studies. Based on frameworks of critical studies, critical disability studies looks at disability as a construct or category created by current political and social systems to uphold existing power relations and systems. Because of this Critical Disability Studies is more interested with questions about the larger system that labels some bodies as disabled while also being grounded in the importance of embodiment, lived experience, and relationships with those outside of the academy. 

Critical Disability Studies

Disability Studies is an interdisciplinary field of study that examines the consequences and implications of disability as well as various issues that impact the disability community.

Disability Studies

The social model positions society as the disabling agent, rather than an individual’s impairment. Under the social model, an impairment is not automatically a disability. It is only a disability when society is not structured (physically, socially, or culturally) to include that impairment/variation. For example, in a society where glasses/corrective lenses are accessible and socially accepted, the impairment of having blurry vision without them is not necessarily disabling. The social model seeks to make changes in society, rather than focusing on disabled people to change.

Social Model of Disability

Alison Kafer determines that the political/relational model differs from the social model because it includes lived experiences of people with disabilities, in addition to potential medical treatments. 

Political/relational Model 

Price, M. (2024). Crip Spacetime. Duke University Press.

Crip Spacetime

Critical social theory is a group of approaches, most prominently including critical race theory, critical legal theory, and critical disability studies that comes from theorist at the Frankfurt School in the 1930s who theories that the convergence of capitalism, bureaucracy and science was restricting the development of a critical consciousness and ability to critique societal functioning. The heart of more modern critical social theory - along with post-Marxist, post-structuralist, postmodernists, and post-positive theorizing - is the idea of problematizing issues including the terms we are using, or the assumptions given to us, understanding society and culture as something much more dynamic than can be captured purely quantitatively, and a focus on the linking of theory and liberatory praxis. 

Critical Social Theory

Difference between Critical Disability Studies and Disability Studies

- understanding learning disabilities and mental illness

Topics in Critical Disability Studies

References for critical disability studies can be found in the child nodes below.

References in Critical Disability Studies

Commonly used tools for diagnosing mental disorders 

Assessment/Diagnosis 

Overview of some of the principal methods, strategies, and issues in clinical research.

Research Methodology in Clinical Psychology

Also called psychological disorders, these are disorders rooted in mental thought patterns that impair the person's functioning, with specific disorders having their own disgnostic criteria. 

Mental Disorders/Mental Illnesses

Theories in clinical psychology have evolved over time and develop in order to try to explain human behavior and to find ways to help and understand people.

Theories in Clinical Psychology

Child psychopathy is difficult to define concretely; however, research shows there are two factors important in recognizing psychopathic tendencies in children:
- conduct problems (CP) and impulsivity
- callous-unemotional factor (CU)

Factors of Child Psychopathy

References for clinical psychology can be found in the child nodes below.

References for Clinical Psychology

- Psychotherapy
- Pharmacological 
- Hospitalization/Inpatient treatment
- Support groups
- Alternative treatment
- Telepractice
- Neuromodulation
- Biomedical therapy

Mental Health Treatment Methods/Interventions

References for the Connections Between Disabilities and Depression/Anxiety (General Overview)

Connections Between Disabilities and Depression/Anxiety

References for disability studies can be found in the child nodes below. 

References for Disability Studies

- Disability History
- Theories/Definitions of Disability
- Disability Legislation/Policy
- Disability Culture
- Accessibility
- Types of Disability 
- Economic Impacts of Disability
- Inclusive Education and Community Support 
- Black Disability Studies

Topics in Disability Studies

DS emerged as an interdisciplinary field rejecting deficit-driven ideologies and advocating for full societal inclusion of disabled people. Rooted in poststructuralism and postmodernism, it emphasizes activism and social/political transformation rather than medical intervention. The field privileges voices of disabled people and examines disability as socio-political-cultural phenomenon. DS challenges traditional academic approaches that pathologize difference.

Framework for Disability Studies

- Important Books in the Social Model of DIsabilities

Important Literature in the Social Model of Disabilities

The disabled people’s movement was created in reference to people being disabled not because of functionality, but rather because of societal, institutional, and structural barriers that have limited the ability to fully participate in certain activities, settings, events, etc.  

Important Movements within the Social Model of Disability

Coinciding with the important movements within the social model of disability rights [node], sociologists Turner and Killian explain that without the collectivity of the social movement, the disability rights movement would not have become so effective through its institutionalized structure.  

Importance of Social Movement Theory within the Social Model of the Disability Rights Movement

Despite the more widely accepted social model, some people struggled with the idea that their disability is born from society as it can imply that their individual needs should be disregarded. In the 90’s, "feminist disability scholars", such as Liz Crow and Jenny Morris, called for an updated model that still placed the blame of discrimination on society, but made clear that even in the absence of oppression, the effects of disabilities would still have a felt negative impact. Since then, people's perspective shifted to include the idea that impairment and disability are linked.

Reframed Social Model of Disability

Because the social model of disability has become widely recognized as a rationale for multiple barriers, children with disabilities in educational settings have limited participation in certain activities or settings because of exclusive curriculums, poor faculty attitudes and biases, and physical barriers that prevent them from getting around. 

The Importance of National and International Recognition of the Social Model of Disability


Individuals who view disability solely in terms of the social model may unintentionally neglect the subjective, emotional and spiritual disability experience. This could potentially lead to distortions associated with the holistic development of a disability identity.   


Disability Identity Development in terms of the Social Model 


Disabilities have been studied and defined through many lenses over the years. The most popular of these perspectives are the medical model of disability and the social model of disability. An important lens may have been overshadowed over the years - the social relational perspective. 

How is Disability Understood? An Examination of Sociological Approaches

Laws and policies created by governments and government agencies in order to protect the rights of disabled individuals. 

Disability Rights Legislation 

In order for people with disabilities to have equal access to choice and autonomy, they must have the agency to decide when to participate in the mainstream. Thus, centers for independent living aim to support the ability for people with disabilities to function as independently as possible when given the proper resources. 



Centers for Independant Living (CIL's)


The Black Panther party news coverage of the 504 sit-in focused on the oppressions, stereotypes and stigma faced by disabled people. This coverage of the 504 sit-in focusing of the societal and political barriers of disability rather than the medical or physical barriers introduced readers to the social model of disability.

The Social Model of Disability in the Black Panther

The disability rights movement has been criticized for basing disability concepts around the lived experiences and bodyminds of white, heterosexual, wheelchair-using disabled men. One example of a concept that has been challenged is the social model of disability which has been critiqued in various ways - including but not limited to: individuals with chronic pain conditions citing that even with a more accessible society their pain would exist, and racialized and low-income individuals calling out how the social model of disability can erase how while society is ableist overall that ableism is inherently intertwined with racism, classism, and sexism. Disability rights activists have also had a history of leaning back on intracommunity hierarchies of "who is more disabled" that exclude individuals with chronic illnesses, mental disabilities, and intellectual and developmental disabilities. 

Challenges to definitions of disability by the Disability Rights Movement?

There have been various critiques of the social model of disability including that it doesn't full account for individuals with chronic illness, including mental illness, who may experience disabling effects in the absence of a built environment e.g. if they were laying in a void. Additionally, the social model of disability often ignores the entanglement of disablement, or the conditions underwhich individuals become disabled, with racial and gendered disparities in health care access, discrimination, and maiming either through war or structural systems of violence. 

Critiques of the Social Model of Disability

Identity-first language is often used by communities, for example the Deaf and autistic communities, who believe that identity-defining features cannot be separated from the individual. This is pertinent in languages such as English where adjectives typically precede nouns, e.g. "talented child" instead of "a child with talent."  

Some believe differentiating the language we use for disability from language we use for other adjectives may perpetuate stigma rather than mitigate it. 

Identity-first language is also prompted by individuals who believe that their disabled embodiment is essential to and should not be separated from them or their humanity. This usage also can signal how some disabled individuals view disability as an integral part of their cultural identity.

Some scholars have noted how person-first language is used to refer to children with disabilities but not often used for nondisabled children, this creates a separation with person-first language being used to discuss disability but identity-first language is used to discuss other identity neutral or positive attributes.

Some view the use of identity-first language as a way to highlight disability as an identity  category since identity-first language is used for other categories including race, gender, and sexual orientation.

Arguments for identity-first language

The edited volume publishes current research and theory demonstrating how Discursive Psychology (DP) provides nuanced understandings of disability. The book challenges the traditional view that disabilities represent a biological truth, arguing instead that disability is inseparable from the cultural models that define it and is continually produced within discourse. DP is employed as a theoretical and methodological perspective to examine how disability is made real, ascribed, contested, and negotiated in everyday and institutional social practices and language-in-use, providing a post-cognitive critique of medicalization. 

Book: Discursive Psychology and Disability

Developed by Michael Oliver, this model represents disability as culturally-constructed through centuries of medical thinking and knowledge systems. It argues disability concepts are deployed to attribute individual causes for systematic exclusion of certain bodies and minds. The model examines how medical discourse creates categories that justify social exclusion. It emphasizes material conditions and power structures behind disability construction.

Materialist Social Model

When AI design incorporates elements of the social model, the focus shifts to recognizing barriers in the environment — such as inaccessible digital interfaces or biased hiring algorithms — as the true sources of disablement. For example, inclusive design frameworks that emphasize accessibility standards in natural language processing or computer vision can push AI developers to mitigate structural inequities rather than framing disabled users as “edge cases.” However, the article points out that most AI development still fails to take this model seriously, meaning ableism remains embedded in the very design process.

How Social Model Shapes AI

Schools sustain a rigid binary between ability and disability based on medicalized conceptions. This dichotomy positions students categorically as "abled" or "dis/abled" with hierarchical implications. The binary naturalizes the idea that some students are competent while others are incompetent. Fixed categories prevent recognition of disability as socially constructed.

Ability/Disability Binary

Disability Studies in Education repositions disability as social, cultural, and political construction. DSE shifts focus from individual pathology to systemic structures. Core tenets include contextualizing disability politically, promoting social justice, privileging disabled voices, and rejecting deficit models. This provides theoretical grounding for systemic change.

Disability Studies in Education (DSE) Framework

Ultimate aim: schools move beyond labeling based on medical diagnoses. Framework guides shift toward understanding disability as social construction and political category. Emphasis on equity and full inclusion for all students. Change requires rejecting deficit models and embracing difference. 

Moving Towards Inclusion

The social model of disability, which frames disability as socially constructed and a universal experience, is suggested as a way to reduce both essentialism and blame, leading to lower stigma and greater support for disability policies.

Reducing Essentialism and Blame through the Social Model of Disability

Universal design is a framework for creating environments that are accessible and usable for everyone, regardless of their abilities. Professionals should strive to implement universal design principles in their workspaces and activities. Office space is often minimal, and there is not much professionals can do about it. If that is the case, acknowledge the limited space with your clients to show them you care. That will go a long way.

Universal Design

Applied to AI, this perspective reveals how algorithmic systems co-construct disability through classification practices, data labeling, and deployment in real-world contexts such as education, employment, or healthcare. For instance, hiring algorithms that rank candidates not only exclude disabled applicants but also actively reshape what “qualified” means. This model pushes us to see AI not as neutral infrastructure but as a powerful actor in reinforcing or disrupting systemic ableism.

How Political/Relational Model Shapes AI

Price notes that since space can be seen as both intra-active and relational that space is also political-relational. Price pulls on Allison Kafer's political-relational model of disability to note that space is also political because who gets envisioned and defined in/out of space is political.

Space as Political-Relational

Contrary to some's belief there is no set list of conditions that count as disabilities in the Americans with Disabilities Act, rather disability is defined having, having a history of, or being regarded as having an impairment that inhibits one or more major life activities. Part of the reasoning for this way of defining disability was being of the politics around HIV/AIDS in the late 1980s and early 1990s. HIV/AIDS was still highly stigmatized in the late 1980s and early 1990s because of its association with the LGBTQ+ community, and abandonment of individuals who were dying during the HIV/AIDS epidemic by President Ronald Reagan. This lead to a large political debate during the passage of the ADA of whether HIV/AIDS should be included as a disability in the legislation. Queerphobic, homophobic and transphobic legislators who did not want to appear to their constituents to be supporting rights for the LGBTQ+ community by including HIV/AIDS as a disability in the ADA helped shape a definition of disability that did not outline certain conditions to make the inclusion of folks with HIV/AIDS less evident. 

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