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

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. 

Example of the Political-Relational Model of Disability and HIV/AIDS

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. 

University of Rochester

- Medical Model 
- Social Model
- Relational/Political Model

Historical Models of Disability 

Children nodes connected include several alternate ways of classifying and defining disability

- Medical Model 
- Social Model
- Identity Model
- Human Rights Model
- Cultural Model
- Economic Model
- Charity Model
- Limits Model
- Cultural Model
- Educational Model
- Functional Model
- Materialist Social Model

Conflicting Models and Definitions of Disability

Kafer, Alison. (2013). Feminist, Queer, Crip. Indiana University Press. 978-0-253-00934-0. 

Feminist, Queer, Crip

The medical model positions a disability as something that must be diagnosed and addressed with medical intervention. It views disabilities as something that reduces a person’s quality of life, curing the disability as the ultimate goal. Also, the medical model promotes the image of people with disabilities as needing health care or as “sick”. Many people with the philosophy of the medical model underestimate the human capacity to learn about the complexities of the human body, and thus to make safe decisions about one’s disability.

Medical Model of Disability

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

Political/relational Model 

Disability is multidimensional, and the three major models of disability cannot be cleanly separated in practice. Instead, each model highlights different aspects of experience, and tensions emerge when they are operationalized. For instance, someone with chronic pain may qualify as disabled under a medical definition, but effective medication and support might minimize disablement socially. Conversely, someone with arthritis could be highly disabled in practice yet excluded from formal recognition or resources if their condition does not meet political or diagnostic criteria.

Interactions Between Different Models of Disability

A classification method developed by the World Health Organization to model the impacts of a disability on a person's life. In this model, disability has three components, or dimensions, in which effects of disability can be observed. These are based on impairment, activity limitation, and participation restrictions. Any particular disability may cause a positive or negative effect in all or only some of these categories. 





Three Dimensions of Disability Classification Model

This model is considered to be a more nuanced approach of the social/political view of disability studies, ranging from medical to socio-political views. It explored disabilities as the interaction with the societies around them, as it was believed that one's disability is a product of the environment and bodily factors.

Cultural Model View of Disabilities

People that view disability from an educational perspective often see people with disabilities as needing assistance to become more like the rest of “us”. The problem with this view is that it promotes low expectations of people with disabilities, and assumes unequal relationships.This philosophy also assumes successful people with disabilities are heroic , inspirational, role-models, and/or courageous. 

Educational model of demeaning disability-friendly terminology

The Functional Model constructs disability in more subjective terms and takes into account how their impairment affects the functioning of a specific individual based on their daily purpose and tasks.  

The Functional Model of Disability 

In this piece, Paul Heilker examines autism as a form of rhetoric and how the various forces, media portrays, autistic community understandings, and cultural forces, work to construct autism as an overwhelmingly white phenomenon in public discourses. 

Autism, Rhetoric, and Whiteness

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.

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