Understanding key Concepts: Medical Model versus Social Model

The definition and classification of disabled persons have gone through a number of changes over the centuries. Specialists have grouped disability approaches into two models, namely “social model” and “medical model”.

The distinctions between the “social model” and the “medical model” of disability can initially seem remote from the concerns of someone unfamiliar with disabilities struggling to ensure that persons with disabilities have equal access to the mainstream social life, such as their ability to enjoy their right to access transportation infrastructure, or access to the HIV/AIDS education.

The theory of Medical Model Approach uses traditional approaches which states that the inability to carry out activities is caused by impairment or impairments. For example, you are not mobile because you have a spinal injury. This understanding of disability is said to be a medical model of disability because the causes of disability are attributed only to medical conditions.

In contrast, the Social Model Approach is not limited by such a narrow description of activities. It takes the wider view that the ability to take such activities is dependant upon social intervention. It can show that the limitation of activity is not caused by impairments but is a consequence of social organisation – hence the phrase 'social model'.

In short, the social model says that a person is disabled if the world at large will not take into account their physical or mental differences. It takes in account the definition of disability as the exclusion of people with impairments from family and social life, equal education, employment and access to basic services because of discrimination.

Discrimination limits persons with disabilities’s most fundamental rights. Where polling cards are not available in Braille or another accessible format, blind people are denied their right to vote. Where schools have no sign language translation, Deaf people are denied their right to education. Where hospitals do not provide information in simple, accessible ways, people with learning difficulties are denied their right to know what is wrong with them or to make decisions about their treatment. Where wells or latrines are physically inaccessible, people with mobility impairments are denied their rights to clean water and sanitation.

Disability needs to be defined within context, rather than focussing on the inability of people that inadvertently leads to stigmatisation and categorisation. This takes cognisance of persons with disabilities's viewpoint that disability is a social construct and most of its effects are inflicted uponpersons with disabilities by their social environment. For example, it is not the disability, nor the wheelchair that disables a person but it is the stairs leading to a building.

This column will, therefore, focus most of the discussions on the social model of disability, as today, human rights activists, programme planners and policy makers use the social model because it has been developed by persons with disabilities, and best represents their experiences and perspectives.