ABSTRACT
The social model of disability has been called ‘the big idea’ of the disability movement (Hasler, 1993). To many, it appears to be the fundamental political principle which both first initiated and now sustains the disability rights challenge. For these advocates, to abandon the social model would be to abandon the whole edifice of disability rights and disability equality. Yet the social model itself is a very simple and brief statement which turns the traditional definition of disability on its head. As the UPIAS activists argued:
In our view, it is society which disables physically impaired people. Disability is something imposed on top of our impairments, by the way we are unnecessarily isolated and excluded from full participation in society.
