d
i
s
medical
a
b
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social

The medical model of disablity maintains that a person with an impairment is disabled by that impairment, and the response is therfore cure, care or normalisation into society.

The social model of disablity maintains that a person is disabled not by their impairment, but by such things as society's attitudes towards them, the inaccessibility of the built enviroment and by the institutional structures within that society.

Impairment is indiscriminate in who it chooses. It has no respect for age, race, sexuality, gender or economics. The current generation will contain the largest ever number of people of retirement age, all of whom will at some point experience some form of 'disability' whether temporary or permanent.