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Introduction

Terms of reference

The majority of policies and laws introduced by the Government over the past 30 years defined disability using the medical model. Even the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, the latest legislation which aims to improve the rights of disabled people, is based on the medical model of disability.

The medical model sees the disabled person as the problem. Disabled people are to be adapted to fit into the world as it exists. The emphasis is on dependence, backed up by the stereotypes of disability that evoke pity, fear and patronising attitudes. Attention usually focuses on the impairment, rather than the needs of the disabled person.

Often, control is exercised over disabled people by the design of the built environment, which presents disabled people with many barriers and makes it difficult or impossible for their needs to be met. This negates any concept of equal opportunity and curtails their chances in work, education, leisure and entertainment, transport and housing, or in personal, family and social life.

The medical model means that legislation such as the Disability Discrimination Act requires complex measurements of impairment and functional limitation to determine who should be protected by the Act. Time need not be wasted developing an elaborate system for defining who will benefit from laws and policies. Making the environment barrier-free will remove the disabling factor and eliminate the need to establish whether someone is, or is not, disabled. Therefore, the terms of reference for this Code of Practice are set by the social model of disability.

The social model shows that discrimination against disabled people is created by society. This has little to do with the disabilities themselves; it is through the attitudes and actions of others that those discriminatory practices and barriers which disable are developed.

The Code of Practice details how society can remove physical barriers faced by disabled people rather than how disabled people can overcome barriers erected by society. By doing so the Code of Practice is a document that assists the processes laid out in the social model of disability, and aims to be both positive and inclusive in its approach.

About the Code of Practice, Consultation

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