ABSTRACT
The combination of industrialisation, urbanisation, and associate ideologies including: liberal utilitarianism, Social Darwinism, and Eugenics, provided "scientific" legitimacy to ancient myths, fears and prejudices, and the gradual but intensifying commodification of everyday life. As a result "work" became almost exclusively associated with wage labour and paid employment. Those considered incapable of work, and labelled "disabled" were, apart from in, and immediately following, times of war, excluded from the workplace. Discrimination against disabled people is therefore institutionalised in the very fabric of western society; consequently, disabled people encounter a whole range of material, political and cultural barriers to meaningful mainstream employment and social participation. The barriers remain because, hitherto, legislation has been weak and piecemeal and, without exception, is founded, one way or another, on an individualistic rather than a holistic approach to the problem of disability. Where legislation exists enforcement must be properly funded and made highly visible; naming and shaming those who act in discriminatory ways.
