The disability rights movement began in the 1960s when people with disability and their allies started rejecting the idea that they needed to be ‘fixed’.
This led to the social model of disability which says that the main problem isn't the disability itself but all the barriers in society that stop people with disability from being included.
The social model separates the ideas of impairment and disability. An impairment is a difference in a person’s body or mind, while disability is created by the challenges that people face as a result of impairment. Unlike the medical model, the social model says that disability is caused by society. Society ‘disables’ people through environmental, institutional and communication barriers and through negative attitudes, which stop people from participating fully in everyday life.2
The social model is one of the most dominant ways of understanding disability. However, some people with disability have criticised it for only focusing on the way society disables people without considering the impact on people’s daily lives of their impairment, such as pain or mobility issues.