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Accessibility and design for all
Published in Corinne Mulley, John D. Nelson, Stephen Ison, The Routledge Handbook of Public Transport, 2021
The importance of the capability Model is that it frees up consideration of accessibility from particular ‘disabilities’. This places a different emphasis from that of the medical model of disability, in which the emphasis was placed on the condition which yielded the disability, and the social model of disability (Oliver, 1996), in which the emphasis was placed on the social inability to create an accessible environment as the cause of the disability. The capability model places the emphasis on what the person can do, however they manage to do it – including the use of any assistive device – and contrasts this against what the environment requires, however it imposes that requirement. This openness is very important when it is necessary to take into account the combination of capabilities that might be involved in a particular interaction with the environment, for example, the combination of physical, sensorial and cognitive capabilities that can be brought to bear to enable someone to overcome an obstacle. It also places a much heavier burden on the environment to be able to respond to the full range of, and differences between, people’s capabilities.
Designing Experiences
Published in Lisa Grocott, Design for Transformative Learning, 2022
In respecting infinite positions, co-existing narratives and different orientations to designing, we move the conversation away from a universal framing to a pluriversal understanding (33; 34). The social model of disability (35) provides a productive conceptual frame that asks us to see beyond an individual, medical model of disability by arguing that it is society that dis/ables the person with the impairment from full participation. In designing for learning, this social model implores the system, service or experience to adapt to and meet the needs of all people it serves. Yet, the work needed to unsettle dominant education and societal narratives calls on recognising multi-variate socio-cultural and economic barriers to full participation.
Accessible Housing? One Man’s Battle to get a Foot Through the Door
Published in Philip D. Bust, Contemporary Ergonomics 2006, 2020
H.J. McDermott, R.A. Haslam, A.G.F. Gibb
The paradigm shift from the individual, or medical model of disability to the social model of disability informed British housing policy during the 1990’s and reflected a growing acceptance of a collective responsibility to create a fully inclusive environment. Stewart et al, 1999, for example, argue that the inability to access a dwelling in a wheelchair is not the result of a disability, but due to the fact that architects have consistently failed to design dwellings which are accessible to everyone. Instead of viewing the needs of the disabled as “special needs”, requiring separate provisions for housing, the social model of disability supports a collective response to a socially created problem.
Language matters! The long-standing debate between identity-first language and person first language
Published in Assistive Technology, 2022
Krista L. Best, W. Ben Mortenson, Zach Lauzière-Fitzgerald, Emma M. Smith
Outside the United States, there has been an increased demand to use identity-first language especially among the disability rights community (i.e., advocates of disability culture). This is congruent with the social model of disability, which indicates that disability is not an innate characteristic of the individual, but rather it is societal attitudes and structures that make people disabled (i.e., the term disabled people is justified to emphasize how these individuals are disabled by society; Oliver, 2013). There are also those who prefer identify-first language because they take pride in this aspect of their identities. Thus, although person-first language is taught in many North American health professions programs and mandated by many medical journals, identity-first language may be preferred by those with lived experience. Although person-first language is meant to promote respect to an individual, the concept is based on the notion that disability is something negative.
Exploring Stakeholder Perspectives on the UK’s Regulatory Tools for Accessible Housing: Lessons for Canada
Published in Journal of Aging and Environment, 2022
Katie Vaughan, Mikiko Terashima, Kate Clark, Katherine Deturbide
The likelihood of experiencing disability increases with age (Roy et al., 2018). The definition of disability has evolved from a predominantly medical model, where challenges experienced by an individual originate from medical conditions or diagnoses, to today’s more widely accepted social model (Oliver, 2013). Whereas the medical model attributes disability to the individual, the social model of disability takes environmental and societal factors into consideration (Goering, 2015). Impairments alone at the individual level may not create disability, but sociocultural expectations and the built environment together can limit opportunities to carry out daily activities for persons who experience physical or psychological impairments, activity limitations, or participation restrictions (Patel & Brown, 2017).
‘The shops were only made for people who could walk’: impairment, barriers and autonomy in the mobility of adults with Cerebral Palsy in urban England
Published in Mobilities, 2020
James Bonehill, Nadia von Benzon, Jon Shaw
According to Scope UK there are 13.9 million disabled people in the UK (Scope, undated). Whilst different definitions of ‘disability’ exist, the social model of disability, the preferred definition amongst activists and scholars, sees disability as a social injustice resulting from society’s inability to meet the needs of people with impairments (Oliver 2004). Under English and Welsh law,1 rights enshrined in the Equality Act 2010 mean that disabled people should be treated as full members of the community, with the rights to access public and private spaces, social and leisure activities, work and personal relationships on the same terms as non-disabled people. Despite such rights, there remains widespread evidence of systematic environmental and social exclusion of disabled people in the UK, referred to by Goodley and Runswick-Cole (2011, 602) as a ‘dominant culture of disablism’. The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) (2017) is clear that disabled people experience this social exclusion as a result of unequal power relations – the social politics of who can do things, who can’t and in what conditions (Cresswell 2010) – referred to within social science literature as the experience of stigma and marginalisation (see Goffman 1973).