Disability identities Flashcards
What is disability?
Disability discrimination act
A physical or mental impairment that has a ‘substantial’ and ‘long-term’ negative effect on an individual’s ability to do normal, daily activities
What is the term, used by disabled people to describe themselves?
‘Differently abled’
What is the disability discrimination act?
1955
Provided legal protection and enforcable rights to disabled people
What is the equality act?
2010
Argues it is illegal to discriminate against someone due to their disability
What are some examples of inclusivity for disabled people?
- Lifts
- Ramps
- Wider doors
- Subtitles in cinemas
- Celebrities: Warick Davis, Ellie Simmonds
What are some examples of physical impairments?
- Amputated limbs
- Blindness
- Deafness
- Cerebral palsy
- Paralysis
What are some examples of mental impairments?
- Austism
- Dyslexia
- ADHD
- Epilepsy
- Bipolar disorder
What are the 2 approaches to understanding disability?
- Medical model
- Social model
How does the medical approach see disability?
- Disability is a medical problem
- Focuses on what the individual cannot do due to their disability, rather than what they can do
- Defining of a person, due to their disability
- Results in victim blaming
What does Shakespeare say about the medical model?
Negative identity, traditional
- Disabled people are socialised into this way of seeing themselves as victims
- ‘The person with the impairment may have an investment in their own incapacity, because it can become the rationale for their own failure’ (learned helplessness and victim mentality)
How does the social model see disability?
- Focuses on the social and physical barriers to inclusion (e.g: lack of accessibility- buildings)
- See society as the disabling factor
- Argue for the term ‘differently abled’
What does Oliver say about the social model?
Negative identity, traditional
- Society disables the physically impaired as the disabled are excluded from full participation in society, by stereotypical attitudes held by able-bodied people
What does Best say about the social model?
Negative identity, traditional
- ‘Society generates forms of discrimination and exclusion that disabled people have to cope with. The problem is to be found in the social constructions of prejudice that surround disability, and not in the bodies of disabled people’
What are some examples of positive discrimination/presentations of disability?
- Paralympics/invictus games
- Positive images in the media: Ellie Simmonds, Warick Davis, George Webster
- Blue badges
- Increased accessibility (new builds)
- Scope: name change, videos
- Laws (equality act, disability discrimination act)
What does Murugami say about disability?
Positive identity, non-traditional
- Disabled people have the ability to construct a self-identity, accepting of their impairment, but independant of it
- See themselves as a person first, and view their impairment as one of their characteristics
How can Featherstone and Hepworth’s ideas be applied to disability?
Positive identity, non-traditional
- Increase in positive media images of disability
- E.g: celebrities
How can Becker’s labelling theory be applied to disability?
Negative identity, traditional
- The term ‘disabled’ holds a negative stigma
- This creates a master status (burden, problematic)
What does Gill say about disability?
Negative identity, traditional
- Polio survivor, who became disabled later in life
- ‘When you have become a member of the group that you previously felt fear and pity for, you can’t help but turn those feelings on yourself’
- See themseleves first in terms of their disability
What does Zola say about disability?
Negative identity, traditional
- ‘The very vocabulary we use to describe ourselves is borrowed from discriminatory, able-bodied society. We are de-formed, dis-eased, dis-abled, dis-ordered, ab-normal and in-valid’
What is learned helplessness?
- Some disabled people may internalise the idea that they are incapable of changing a situation, and thus fail to take action to help themselves
