ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a note on terminology before outlining the origins and development of disability studies and, in particular, the social model of disability in the UK. It explores disability studies and critical disability studies, identifying key aspects of both approaches. The British social model makes a clear distinction between impairment and disability – it severs the causal link between impairment and disability. The central precept of the British social model of disability is the distinction between impairment and disability. In social model discussion, the term 'disabled people' is therefore used because this recognises that people with impairments are disabled by society's responses to impairment that is by barriers to their full inclusion in the mainstream of society. Historically, disability research was underpinned by individual model understandings of disability – research focused on individual deficit and was undertaken on, rather than with disabled people.
