What is disability

The first task, to define disability, is a challenge in itself due to the sheer magnitude of bodily variation in the human population. In a world without similar patterns of discrimination 10 across the disability community, it would be incoherent to group thousands of unrelated physiological and psychological variations together. For the purposes of this research, there are still some useful systems of organization that are understood in common usage because, while the corporeal experiences of people with disabilities vary greatly, the effects of exclusion due to ableism are experienced quite consistently. According to the World Health Organization, disability has three dimensions based upon the Medical Model of disability: impairment, activity limitation, and participation restrictions (Geneva, 2001). Impairment refers to physiological or mental changes in function (e.g. a broken leg or Alzheimer's). Disabilities can refer to genetic attributes from before and after birth or physiological changes or injuries over the course of life. A disability may also be a static, progressive, or intermittent condition. This is all to say that every person will experience at least temporary disability in their lifetime. It is vital to provide an additional definition for disability as well. While the WHO represents the messaging of the Medical Model of disabilities, Mike Oliver (2004) and other academics represent the Social Model of Disability. The Social Model theorists assert that disability is defined by a culture and the socially constructed barriers that prevent full social inclusion. The idea of disability itself is partially a creation of the capitalist and scientific movements in America. As Wasserman et al. contend, “there were no such concepts [of disability] to attend to until 19th century scientific thinking put variations in human function and form into categories of abnormality and deviance" (2016). Like race or sex, immutable genetic and environmental traits result in socially constructed identities, but in the case of disability there are sometimes functional and material underpinnings to those differences. To understand disability with a little more nuance, some theory can provide insight to the way this population has been regarded over time. As Burch and Sutherland write, before the 11 1980s, the “assessment of disability came almost exclusively from outsiders: educators, doctors, and policy makers. Most adhered to what we now call a Medical Model of disability" (2006). Under this model, the person is pathologized and reduced to a category. The disability is treated as a problem to be remedied. The barrier to opportunities and access in society at large is seen as a result of the disability itself. This model implies that the disability is what causes quality of life variations. This has economic consequences for benefits, too: “The Medical Model appears to support the correction of the biological condition or some form of compensation when that is impractical" (Wasserman et al., 2016). Thus, society bears the cost of not only medical rehabilitation and assistance, but also the systemic costs of exclusion. Curative methodology sees disability as a deficiency to be remedied with professional treatment and assistance. These approaches, by necessity, narrowly envision individual reformation. Unfortunately, these models relegate humans to the role of patient and deviant. This approach deemphasizes and excludes the knowledge and experiences of people with disabilities. In the 1980’s, the Social Model of disability came into favor as a result of changing attitudes and the work of disability activists (Burch and Sutherland, 2006). This model emphasizes the arbitrary nature of the social and economic boundaries placed on individuals because of random genetic factors and diseases (Wasserman et al., 2016). The barriers for full participation are seen as the problem, and removing those obstructions is the primary concern for improving quality of life. Of course, just like race, disabilities are socially recognized categories. Additionally, there are very real, material consequences of medical conditions as demonstrated by the lived experiences of individuals with disabilities. Social limitations also define what is valuable and necessary in the lives of individuals with disabilities. Barriers to the workplace like missing elevators, transportation, or working 12 accommodations are seen as the operative problem, not the physiological or psychological characteristics of people with disabilities. Wasserman et al. note that under this view, “the main reason people with disabilities encounter hardship is because they suffer discrimination along the same lines as racial or ethnic minorities. Accordingly, civil rights protections and anti-discrimination laws are the proper responses to disability" (2016). This is not to compare the struggles of the two communities, in fact this is an intersectional problem; people with disabilities in Black, Indiginous, and people of color (BIPOC) communities face even greater hardship, abuse, and neglect (NDI, 2019). The 1990 ADA in America was a response to those new notions and ideals of inclusivity. The question to ask is whether those laws are materially changing the lives of Americans with disabilities to provide them the same access to life and labor as their non-disabled counterparts. Based on the longitudinal employment data, there are serious grounds to question the economic efficacy of the ADA, at least as it is currently supported by other programs (U.S. BLS, 2013). But, at the same time, there can be no doubt the ADA introduced a radical new era of accessibility to spaces, transportation, and education. Americans with disabilities have a long and complicated relationship with the medical industry and with the Government due to a long list of human rights abuses which have occurred. For example, Liat Ben-Moshe writes on the relationship between the carceral state and disability in American capitalism. Employment metrics in studies around the world demonstrate that there is a connection between economic condition, rates of disability claims, and social wellbeing (Mont, 2014). Disability, like unemployment, can be viewed as a direct result of structural inefficiencies in our models of social organization and the private labor market. Ben-Moshe illustrates that point here: 13 “In the context of capitalism, disability became the category through which people are measured as need based or work based... . Such interpretations dispel the common belief that people with disabilities are not productive under the capitalist system because they do not hold jobs. As Russell suggests, people with disabilities are commodified and deemed profitable, especially when occupying institutional beds. By clever capitalist alchemy, surplus populations are spun into gold. Disability is commodified through this matrix of incarceration (prisons, hospitals, nursing homes, and more).” This is the strange contradiction of disability in American society: though society disproportionately excludes Americans with disabilities from productive life, the healthcare and financial sectors depend on the needs of chronically and acutely ill patients to survive. In a monetary state where we are forced into wage work to earn our place in society and to pay taxes, disability is the logical category for people whose bodily and material circumstances prevent full social participation. Although the ADA on its face changed the legal rights of people with disabilities within certain bounds, our institutions take time to adjust to these new ideas of inclusivity and there must be careful consideration in the necessary steps to take to improve the lives and protect the human rights of people with disabilities.