ABSTRACT
Understanding the issue of disability is a difficult task in that the factors involved are complex and contentious. They are complex because they entail the intermeshing of social, political and economic factors and are contentious in that the parties involved are motivated by different ideological concerns and objectives. Particular groups have been instrumental in establishing forms of discourse that have legitimated specific images and explanations. These have contributed to the generation of various policies and practices. All views are not of equal significance or value as can be seen from the dominance of professional discourse in the field of disability, particularly that derived from medicine and psychology. The outcome of this has been a form of reductionism in which problems are individualised and the necessity and centrality of professional judgement and practice has been powerfully legitimated. (See Ryan et al, 1980; Scull, 1979; Tomlinson, 1982; Ford et al, 1982).
