Laws and policies created to protect the rights of disabled individuals in the United States.

Disability Rights Legislation in the United States

Laws and policies created to protect the rights of disabled individuals in Australia. 

Disability Rights Legislation in Australia

Practices, rules, or laws that effect one or more protected groups disproportionately. There need not be express intent to discriminate against a protected class in order to be considered a desperate impact.

Disparate Impact

Organizations and agencies at the United States federal and state level that are tasked with protecting disability rights. 

United States Government Groups Focused on Disability Rights

In 1995, the Disability Discrimination Act was enacted with a purpose of outlawing discrimination against people with disabilities. 

Disability Rights Legislation in the United Kingdom

Disability legislation is making a change towards policies more focused on individual human rights. With the institution of the PAIPDI, the country, like many other European countries in current times, isworking towards a renewed and improved understanding of disabilities with the goal of more just practices.

Disability Policy in Portugal 

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

Pepperdine University

Protects individuals from systematic oppression from governments or other institutions and individuals. 

Civil and Political Rights

- 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

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

US Department of Justice . (n.d.). A Guide to Disability Rights Laws. A guide to disability rights laws. Retrieved September 17, 2021, from https://www.ada.gov/cguide.htm. 

A Guide to Disability Rights Laws

Disability Rights Legislation 

A movement working towards achieving equal citizenship for all. In addition to focusing on bringing practical changes for the future from current legal and social theory, it is also concerned with redressing historical harm done. 

American Civil Rights Movement

Protected groups, known as prohibited groups in Canada, are groups that maintain a special level of protection under the law. These groups and the level of legal protection vary by country, but typically these preclude the government or private individuals from discriminating against a protected group.

Protected Group/Class (Prohibited Grounds)

The study of the impact disability has on individual's wealth.

Economic Impacts of Disability

The differences in norms, lifestyles, and social identities, propagated among disabled individuals. It often forms as a reaction toward past and present attitudes towards disabled communities. It promotes connection, camaraderie, and a shared purpose among those in the community. It also includes a motivation for people with disabilities to address their own civil, social, political, and economic needs

Disability Culture

Ensuring that all people have the ability to utilize a product, facility, or service, regardless of any disability they may have. Accessibility may include the modification of existing infrastructure, products, or services or designing them with disabled users in mind.

Accessibility

While not all disabilities can fit neatly into one category, these categories generally encapsulate the types of disabilities through the Impairment Dimension.

-	Cognitive / Intellectual 
-	Chronic Illnesses 
-	Developmental
-	Mental 
-	Physical / Sensory
-	Speech / Communication


Types of Disabilities

Defining disability, what it is and importantly who is included inside of it, remains controversial among different disciplines. This can lead to justice issues and denial of care for individuals who may not fit some definitions of disability and yet still identify as disabled.

Challenges in Defining Disability

The evolution of how every topic regarding disabilities has changed over time throughout the world.

History of Disability Studies

To address some of the ideological disconnects between educators and parents, researchers have suggested teachers consider a Disability Studies (DS) framework as they collaborate with families on the IEP process. Scholars approaching DS through 
an educational lens applies the constructing pieces of disability studies to the exploration of disability in school contexts.

Using The Framework of Disability studies to Formulate An IEP

Abosi, O., & Koay, T. L. (2008). Attaining Development Goals of Children with Disabilities: Implications for Inclusive Education. International Journal of Special Education, 23(3), 1–10. 

Attaining Developmental Goals of Children with Disabilities: Implications for Inclusive Education

The aim of inclusive education is to help people with disabilities live independent lives in their communities by allowing them access to equal educational and social opportunities. It eliminates discrimination in education by approaching differences with consideration, patience, and compassion. 

Aim of Inclusive Education

A caregiver is the parent or other family member that is responsible for parenting or caring for a child with a disability. A caregiver provides daily unpaid support for a person who is unable to perform the necessary tasks for daily living.

Caregivers

The inclusion of individuals with disabilities in research is a debated topic lacking protocol. 

Disability Studies Research Ethics

- 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

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?

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.

Difference between Critical Disability Studies and Disability Studies

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.

Learn Before

Related

Learn After