Introduction

Manifestos provide a fulcrum for social change. They can take the form of formal manifestos, great speeches, books, pamphlets and YouTube videos and even 140 character tweets. In 1963 Martin Luther King Jr. set out his manifesto for racial equality in his seminal I Have a Dream speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. One of the crucial strategies deployed in this was the development of the social model of disability, famously articulated in the manifesto from the Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS) and the Disability Alliance in 1976. The UPIAS manifesto articulated an alternate to the dominant medical model of disability. Importantly, the manifesto, and the social model it articulated, also gave common cause amongst people with a wide range of physical impairments and their allies to work together to overcome this discrimination that they all experienced. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.