Why I don’t like the social model of disability

Introduction

I had a reason to google the social model of disability and found the Wikipedia entry. It was an interesting read after close on a decade of not revisiting the concept.

Here’s a bit I found interesting: “The social model of disability is based on a distinction between the terms impairment and disability. In this model, the word impairment is used to refer to the actual attributes (or lack of

attributes) that affect a person, such as the inability to walk or breathe independently.”

I don’t like it because it attempts to break a personal reality into two elements – the lived experience and the environment in which that experienced is lived – and that environment is only ‘social’. It tries to divide the lived experience into neat rational domains. But when was the last time you heard a person with disability use the term ‘impairment’? Also, in the UK, where this concept originated the preferred terminology is ‘disabled person’ – as if the defining attribute of a person is how they are able to function in a social setting.

I want to react to this idea and ask whether it is now fit for purpose. I don’t deny that it may have served some good purpose in the past.

Why language matters

My ‘impairments’ are with me whether I am at home or out in the social world or in the natural world. I am quite aware that ‘social’ can embrace all three settings since, from a distinctly technical perspective, all can be covered by the term. I have Masters and Masters Honours degrees in Social Ecology – just so you know.

Any argument in support of such a wide embrace of ‘social’ doesn’t work because it is not in common usage – and hence it is meaningless in the context of defining disability in a general or public sense.

The idea that a lot of the extent of disability is down to features of the human-made or human-mediated environment is fair enough. Ableism has long dominated how we think because it reflects the majority situation and cultural aversions to disability in public have dominated consensus thinking for centuries. I have previously observed that despite wars where the veterans have been feted as heroes preserving freedom, we nevertheless continued to build public buildings and spaces which excluded ‘impaired’, veterans who became ‘disabled’ because of those design and construction choices.

The Wikipedia entry also says, “While physical, sensory, intellectual, or psychological variations may result in individual functional differences, these do not necessarily have to lead to disability unless society fails to take account of and include people intentionally with respect to their individual needs.” The intent is well-meaning but unbalanced.

This definition imposes upon “society” a ridiculous burden with no means of doing anything. Failing “to take account of and include people intentionally with respect to their individual needs” sounds good, but it functionally meaningless. It imposes a moral burden on us all without our assent. Intentional inclusion of all people with a disability is a huge ask if we are all expected to deliver on it. It’s a nice ideal but a hopeless expectation as it is.

This is my primary objection to the social model of disability – it isn’t workable. Also, there is no point in splitting terminology, at the level of a definition, into categories nobody will use.

I don’t use the term ‘disabled person’ because for me it’s not the person but their body that is disabled. I get that the social model assumes that the body and the social self are one and the same. I don’t agree. Having a model that rides roughshod over other people’s sense of meaning can’t be representative.

In short, the social model has been imposed, not assented to. I don’t know who came up with the social model, but I would not be surprised if it didn’t involve people living with a disability. Or, if it did, these people were angry (for good reason) and feeling militant.

But we won the moral argument way back. We can’t keep relitigating a case already won. We must move on to the next stage – how do we convert that success into meaningful action. The social model doesn’t help us answer that question.

What’s the alternative?

For starters, let’s be real. How can we have a definition of disability that is universal beyond the essential attributes of impairment of normal human functions? Some impairments reduce our capacity to participate in social activity. Others can exclude any participation at all without extraordinary levels of support – and sometimes not even then. 

I worked in psychiatric hospitals in the early 1970s and subsequently with private facilities that accommodated former psychiatric hospital inmates in the early 1990s and then again from early 2002 to mid 2006.

These people had profoundly impaired capabilities to function in unmanaged social settings. That’s why they were where they were. Yes, social rules defined who was or was not able to access normal social life – often unjustly so – but those rules reflected what a community believed it could accommodate – often unfairly. 

The point is that you can’t define a model of disability that imposes, without consent, expectations by the model designers, upon the community.

Let’s look at the sensible divisions of disability in a social context:

• Mobility disability – modify the physical environment to accommodate mobility needs. Can be done by setting design standards and modifying existing structures.
• Sensory disability – modify the physical environment with assistive technologies, modify communication technologies and practices. Can be done by establishing standards and practices.
• Psycho-social disabilities – modify policies and encourage more empathic, informed and sympathetic behaviours by co-workers and others. Unenforceable as a requirement.
• Undisclosed disabilities – people do not disclose disabilities for fear of adverse consequences from employer or co-workers. No formal action is possible.

What can we ask for?

Mobility disabilities have been at the forefront of the disability inclusion movement because such disabilities are unsubtle and not complex. The social model of disability was designed when this was the dominant consideration.

Modifications to physical settings in an organisational or community context are well underway. This isn’t uniform because there are considerable costs involved. I am a member of my local government’s disability reference group, and I can testify to the level of commitment – in some LGAs at least.

Designing and adapting physical environments is down to commitment and budgets. Expectations are directed by legislation and met by policy and pragmatism. Generally speaking, in my NSW context, we are doing a decent job.

Changing attitudes is an entirely different matter. Some behavioural change is technically mandated by legislation, but enforcement is very problematic. We can’t demand a person be more considerate or compassionate, only encourage them to be so. 

And here’s a problem. Encouragement can be done badly and even excite adverse responses. 

Real conceptions of disability 

I don’t think the social model works as a dominant idea. There are two major weaknesses.

1. The social context is far more complex than a purely physical model and,
2. There is no uniform means of seeking compliance across a community.

This suggests that the social model was primarily designed to influence policy makers – hence excluding the majority of people who might be expected to go along with it.

I live with mobility and manual dexterity disabilities that, since acquiring them in 2008, have radically reduced what I can do. I can’t garden as I used to do. Under the social model my disability would be neutralised by having somebody turn up to do my gardening. I can’t bushwalk as I used to. Accessible tracks would help somewhat but if I had a means of accessing rough tracks that would be even better.

While I deeply appreciate the efforts to make my social environment more accessible, I don’t want to be defined by what others do or are expected to do on my behalf.

Several years ago, I participated in an evaluation of a draft disability inclusion online training course. You couldn’t progress from one stage to the next until you completed a set of questions and got right answers. One section asserted that a person with a disability was limited in what they wanted to do because of their disability. The options were yes/no. I chose ‘No’. That was wrong.

I had a very long list of things I could not do because of my disability. There was no way I was going to hit ’yes’, and it offended me that participants were directed to choose nonsense to pass the course. I communicated my discontent and heard nothing back. I was chair of my department’s Disability Employee Network at the time. The resistance to my objections was a surprise, as was the fact the course had been progressed that far without consultation. Somebody assumed it was a good idea – maybe as a token response to pressure to ‘do something’. We could have had a conversation at the time the idea was raised, not near the end of the design project.

Disability is a 24-hour reality, seven days a week, 365 days a year. The only time I am not aware of my disabilities is when I am in bed. Yes, I am impaired in multiple respects, but the consequences of my impairments is an inability/disability to do many things that have nothing to do with my social setting because that includes private and intimate dimensions.

Impairment might be a technically accurate description, but it doesn’t work as a social statement. But then its more than a social description. People don’t describe themselves as ‘impaired persons’ or ‘persons with impairment’ because the language doesn’t do justice to lived experience. the word ‘impaired’ begs the question – to what to degree? Besides it sounds transient. Disability isn’t as negotiable. And it is permanent.

The notion of permanence isn’t readily acknowledged, but it’s a standard issue. Impairment might be a transient state that would not excite major work to cater to temporary needs – but it should. The nuances of meaning may be relevant in academic and bureaucratic settings, but they are meaningless in the real world.

Problems with the model

There’s a difference between being unable and being disabled. Both must be catered to in an empathic and compassionate community and there is an innate harmony between the two in many respects. So, what’s the difference?

Being unable to do something because of some external impediment is very different from being unable to do something because of a personal impairment. In the latter case one has a disability. In the former one is simply impeded by design and attitudes.

Disability is living with impairment, often to a radical degree, that will not end and which may deteriorate. It doesn’t matter whether the setting is social, private or intimate. It can dominate and even define one’s sense of identity. That sense of identity is determined by personal lived experience far more than a social experience.

I live with my disabilities 24/7. The only time I don’t feel their impact is when I am doing nothing (like lying in bed) or doing something passive (like watching a screen). My ability to function is impaired but those impairments are disabling in so many ways.

I am not impeded in my desire to tap dance. I just can’t do it at all. My tapdancing capability is disabled. My ankles don’t work well enough to make it a thing I can reasonably aspire to do.  I have seen a video of a guy in a wheelchair mountain climbing, but he had a group of volunteers who agreed to help him realise an outrageous ambition. There is no way I could get a group of people to help me tap-dance. Without his support group he has a disability, and I am merely impaired? Give me a break!

So, let’s talk about disability as:

• Personal existential experience (its crap living with a disability)
• Personal environment (making where you live as liveable as possible)
• Direct social environment (can I enjoy getting around my community?)
• Overall social environment (can I enjoy travelling farther afield?)
• Cultural environment (do I feel a sense of stigma or unwanted attention?)

Disability isn’t the simple binary of medical model vs social model. The impact of physical and sensory disabilities can be ameliorated by modifications of the physical environment in private and public domains. These modifications can be contracted or mandated.

Other disabilities may adversely impact a person’s ability to enjoy our shared social spaces because other people who use the same social space must collaborate with them for things to work. But that collaboration cannot be mandated, only contracted – unless given freely.

We cannot have a functional model of disability which relies upon engagement with people who have no obligation or duty to collaborate. To attempt to do so further disempowers people with disability who may already rightly feel disempowered. It also excuses failure by blaming people who have not agreed to be part of a model, and who may have no awareness of it.

I am not here arguing that other people in our social space ought not be kinder and more inclusive of people with disability, only that we can’t build a model on the expectation that they will. Addressing physical access needs by making or buying solutions isn’t even half the problem solved. It is a substantial chunk of the problem though, and those who benefit from these solutions are grateful. 

But that leaves a huge amount of unmet need that the social model cannot address. That unmet need is dependent upon other people’s beliefs, attitudes and behaviours. Their participation must be freely given. It can be a requirement in limited settings – like employment. But even so, compliance with a demand to be inclusive can’t realistically be enforced. If we tried, we’d get resentful performances of compliance that masked negative sentiments that are harmful to the people who we intend to help.

The other huge problem with the social model is that it imposes upon a broad community ethos a singular focus. We would all like a community to be kinder and more inclusive in general. Desiring such only for people with disability seems unfair and unreasonable. Inclusivity can’t be framed in terms of excluding others who also have a need inclusion.

In a recent Your Brain at Work podcast episode David Rock of the Neuroleadership Institute discussed the difference making an action compulsory and making it compelling. See From Mandatory to Compelling: The Science of Filling a Room (10 May 2025). How do we make voluntary inclusive behaviour compelling? Can we? I think we can – if we dare. 

Conclusion

The social model of disability is a lop-sided relic of times gone by. It doesn’t serve the needs of people with disability in general and may well be a disservice to them.

By including an expectation that others modify their behaviour without their assent it has created a passive hope of compliance that will not come. There is no doubt at all that a kinder, more inclusive, community would make life so much better for people with disability who may need consideration, gentleness and compassion to function well in social settings. But that’s not something to be attained by demanding it, or expecting it will happen because it’s in a model.

Here’s a test. Excise that expectation from the social model and what would be the impact? My expectation is that we’d find it has zero adverse consequences and maybe some strong positives. 

It might, for example, free us to better imagine how to create a kinder, more inclusive, community without the distraction of a single theme. In the same way physical accessibility isn’t only about ramps, social accessibility isn’t only about disability.

The Disability Employee Network I was a member of had a motto – Solve for one, extend to many. It was borrowed from inclusive design principles and was intended to say that what we were doing was universally applicable. When we advocated for inclusion, we meant everyone. Disability was just our focus area of expertise, not the limits of our concern.

Disability becomes part of our identity out of necessity, but it doesn’t define it or dominate it – unless we let it. That can happen with disability advocates – if that’s their mission in life. But they need to be mindful that not every person living with disability shares that need.

I don’t want my needs, as a person with disability, defined by a model crafted for a purpose that may no longer be relevant. I am not comfortable with people who do not live with disability believing that the social model of disability is the definitive way to think about disability. I am not cool with the notion that people living with disability think this is the model they should accept because that’s what they have been told by people who they trust. 

We need to review our beliefs and assumptions periodically to make sure they continue to align with current knowledge. The social model of disability was the way to think in 1983. That’s 42 years ago. A lot has changed since then. Do we still need a model of disability? I don’t think so, but I am happy to be shown to be wrong. We do need a more current understanding though.

I hope this has stimulated some fresh thinking.