 viewed negatively in some cultures for example. However, most people with disability have been viewed in stigmatised ways.
Historically, people with disabilities were placed in large institutions where they remained cut off from family, isolated from society and subjected to often brutal treatment. Following a medical model of disability, people with disabilities were typically regarded as objects to be fixed by medical treatment, as objects of charity to be rendered welfare or as a burden of care. Many of these values are still prevalent today.
The advent of the disability rights and community living movements in the latter part of the 20th century brought about a number of changes whereby people with disabilities started to be regarded as active and participating members of society. However, it is still the case that most people with disabilities are still disadvantaged socially, economically, educationally and vocationally.
Disability is a contested concept and definitions have varied over history and according to social norms. There is considerable debate as to what is disability and who are the disabled. Later models of disability distinguished between the various components of disability and for the first time differentiated between the objective impairment, the resulting level of functioning (disability) and the social components that handicap the individual. Impairments can be physical, sensory and cognitive and also include physical, mental and chronic illness. The social model of disability emphasises the perspective that disability is created through structural barriers and is thus created by society while individual, medical models have viewed disability as something inherent in the person.
The CRPD states:
Disability is an evolving concept, and that disability results from the interaction between persons with impairments and attitudinal and environmental barriers that hinders full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others. Disability thus results from an interaction between a non-inclusive society and individuals.
Persons using a wheelchair might have difficulties gaining employment not because of the wheelchair, but because there are environmental barriers such as inaccessible buses or staircases which impede access, as well as attitudinal barriers that discriminate against people with disabilities and hinder their full participation in society.
Human rights and people with disability
The rights of people with disability have been an ongoing issue both in terms of international legislative initiatives as well as through disability rights movements. Most important of international instruments and events are:
the UN Declaration on the Rights of Mentally Retarded Persons (1971),
the Declaration on the Rights of Disabled Persons in 1975,
the International Year for Disabled Persons in 1981,
World Programme of Action concerning Disabled Persons (UN, 1982), and
the United Nations Decade of Disabled Persons (1983_1992).
Culmination of all these is the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities of 2006, which has now been signed by more than 144 countries. In the 20th and 21st centuries a number of industrialized countries made laws to minimize the discrimination of people with disability (to guarantee the rights of people with disability) . Alongside this legislation there has been a concerted effort to improve the lived experiences of people with disabilities. This has resulted in policies that aim to reduce institutional care and in its place promote community living. There have been many questions and issues around community living. While espoused as an ideal, its implementation has not necessarily delivered quality outcomes for all people with disabilities.
Throughout the world, the links between poverty and disability are well documented and deeply concerning, though this is particularly stark in the developing world. It is estimated that approximately 80 per cent of the world’s persons with disabilities live in low-income countries – the majority are poor and cannot acce