ABSTRACT
In the medical model, able-bodiedness is a normative ideal against which disability is compared. Disability becomes the person's sole, salient identity, the focus is on the inability to function and individual reliance on others for care. The alternative model is the social model, which views disability as a creation of society. Social models of disability proposes that disability is socially constructed and that the barriers to disability can be matters of physical accessibility or created by negative attitudes of the able-bodied toward those with disability. Koch claim that threats of euthanasia and eugenics are increasingly encroaching on the lives of those with disability. The most pressing issue that faces disability as a human rights issue is to ensure that people who consider themselves human rights activists understand how and in what way disability is a human rights issue, along with gender, sex, poverty, race, age, and other identity characteristics that are routinely denied privilege.
