ABSTRACT
This chapter examines attitudes towards disability and disabled people in the developing world, and identifies factors behind society's perception of disability within the specific cultural context. This will be helpful in relating the way disabled people in our study on Jordan viewed their own impairments to those of the wider community. Two main forces, although different in nature, have greatly influenced the perceptions towards disabled people in several developing societies which are Islam and Western culture. These are explored in depth within the body of this text. The chapter concludes that despite the overall positive impact of both Islamic and Western ideas over the culture of many developing countries (i.e. Arab and Islamic countries), they have equally affected disabled people in a negative way and to a large extent caused discrimination against them.
