40 Big Ideas

Summary

The social model of disability says people aren't disabled by their bodies or minds—they're disabled by the world around them. Activists in the United Kingdom had this idea in the 1970s. It splits having an ‘impairment’ (like not walking) from being ‘disabled’ (can't enter buildings because there is no ramp available). The social model changed laws and made public places easier to enter. Some people say it misses important things, like pain that won't go away even with better access. But the main point is true: we choose who gets left out, and we can choose differently.

When you can't reach the sink, is the problem your wheelchair or the cabinet that blocks your access? When workplace noise overwhelms you, is the issue your autism or your employer's refusal to provide noise-cancelling headphones? These questions reveal a fundamental shift in how we understand disability—one that emerged from disabled activists and advocates who refused to accept that the problem lay within themselves.

In the mid-1970s, the Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS) challenged decades of medical thinking about disability. Rather than viewing disabled people as broken bodies needing repair, they argued something more radical: disability isn't about individual impairments but about society's failure to include everyone. Mike Oliver crystallized this thinking in his 1983 book, Social Work With Disabled People, clarifying what we now call the social model of disability.

The model distinguishes between impairment and disability. Impairment refers to actual physical, sensory, intellectual, or mental health differences that affect how easily someone moves through the world. Disability, however, emerges when society creates barriers that exclude people with impairments from full participation. A person who uses a power chair isn't disabled by their way of moving, but by buildings without ramps, buses without lifts, and attitudes about who belongs in public spaces.

This model wasn't just a theory. The social model became a political tool that transformed laws. Armed with the understanding that barriers create disability, activists forced changes in public transportation, building codes, and employment law. The conversation shifted from rehabilitation to rights, from individual 'tragedy' to collective fights for rights.

Yet this powerful tool had its limits. Critics like Tom Shakespeare noted that the social model does not address the reality of pain, fatigue, and other experiences that persist in the body regardless of social changes. Patti Berne and other U.S. disability justice activists pointed to another weakness: the model failed to address how disability intersects with race, class, gender, and other systems of oppression.

Today, most disability thinkers navigate these tensions. Emily Ladau argues we can acknowledge social barriers and lived realities of impairment without abandoning the social model's core insights. Lydia X.Z. Brown pushes us to center disabled people's experiences within broader movements against systemic oppression.

While the social model revolutionized physical accessibility in many public spaces, Mike Oliver, a disabled academic scholar, observed in 2013 that employment discrimination and educational exclusion persist, particularly for people with intellectual, developmental, and mental health disabilities. Oliver also warned that economic pressures often tempt governments to weaponize the social model, dividing disabled people into "deserving" and "undeserving" categories to justify cutting services.

The social model's lasting power doesn't lie in its ability to explain everything about the disability experience. Instead, it offers something more vital: a framework for understanding that the barriers we navigate aren't natural or inevitable, but choices society made. When we recognize disability as a design problem, rather than an individual's l, we make it possible to imagine—and build—a world that works for everyone.