This document discusses disability studies and disability rights activism. It defines key concepts like normality, disability, and impairment from both the social model and medical model perspectives. The social model views disability as caused by social and environmental barriers rather than individual impairment. Disability studies questions notions of normalcy and advocates for disability rights. The document also covers accessibility in libraries and information science, and references theories like the biocultures paradigm on the interplay between biology and culture.

1. Questioning Normality
Through Disability
Studies
ACCESSIBILITY AND ACTIVISM
Melissa I. Cardenas-Dow
Spring 2015 – UIUC GSLIS
LIS590SAL
Tuesday, May 5, 2015

2. Agenda
• Definitions: disability, impairment, normality ↔ basics of Semiotics
• Disability Studies ↔ Disability Rights Activism
• Theory: The Social Model of Disability vs. The Medical Model of Disability
• Theory: Biocultures Paradigm
• Accessibility
• LIS
• Disability Studies
• Disability rights activism

3. Social Model Definitions
• Disability – “reformulated to mean the social disadvantages and exclusions that people with impairment face
in all areas of life: employment, housing, education, civil rights, transportation, negotiation of the built
environment, and so forth” (Thomas, 2014).
• Impairment – restrictions due to disease, injury, affliction
• Impairment effects (Thomas, 2014): “the direct and unavoidable impacts that “impairments” (physical, sensory, intellectual, emotional) have
on individuals’ embodied functioning in the social world. Impairments and impairment effects are always bio-social and culturally
constructed in character, and may occur at any stage in the life course.”
• Normal – “constituting, conforming to, not deviating or different from, the common type or standard, regular,
usual” (Davis, 2013).
-- ideal norm
-- “When we think of bodies, in a society where the concept of the norm is operative, then people with
disabilities will be thought of as deviants. This, as we have seen, is in contrast to societies with the concept of an
ideal, in which all people have a non-ideal status” (Davis, 2013).
• Disablism – “refers to the social imposition of avoidable restrictions on the life activities, aspirations and
psycho-emotional well-being of people categorized as “impaired” by those deemed “normal.” Disablism is
social-relational in character and constitutes a form of social oppression in contemporary society –alongside
sexism, racism, ageism, and homophobia. As well as enacted in person-to-person interactions, disablism may
manifest itself in institutionalized and other socio-structural forms” (Thomas, 2014).

4. Basics of Semiotics

5. Discussion:
What definitions of normality, disability, impairment, disease, and wellness do
you often hear in everyday conversation? How are the words used?
Think about your most recent visit to your primary care physician, a casual
conversation with a friend or family member, or an online article or blog post
that you read recently. Notice how definitions of these key concepts point to
deeper mental models.

6. Disability Studies
•Questions “normal” by contrasting normality and disability of the human body (+human
experience)
•Focus: interdisciplinary – Humanities & Arts: representation of “normal” and embodiment in
literature, art, media; changes in representations of these categories through cultures and
historical periods; Social Sciences & Education: representation, treatment of “normal,”
“impairment,” and “disability” in policies, institutions, and societal structures
•Labels of “normal,” “disabled,” and those that come with diagnoses create tensions that play out
in the social and cultural fields of human meaning
•Intersects with other categories – i.e., gender, race, ethnicity, language, sexual orientation
•Still difficult to uncover and discover (see Herther, 2015)

7. Disability Rights Activism
• Questions “normal” by asserting…
• Disabled people/people with disabilities are normal
• Impairment through disease and injury are part of the human condition
• Disabled people do have difficulties and hardship, but they are people too (Stella Young, April 2014
TEDxSydney video):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8K9Gg164Bsw

8. Disability Rights Activism
•Disabled people are not objects of inspiration; disability is not category of exceptionality
•Living with disability does not create exceptionality in human experience
•People with invisible/hidden disabilities defy categorizations that separate “normal” (i.e., non-
disabled people) from “exceptions” (i.e., disabled people)
•Diagnoses can be labeling
•Labels of “normal,” “disabled,” and those that come with diagnoses create tensions that play out
in the social and cultural fields of human meaning

9. Theory: The Social Model of Disability
• The Social Model of Disability
• “being disabled was an entirely socially caused phenomenon” (Thomas, 2014).
• Separates impairment (actual, physical restriction of activity) from disability (social construction of restriction)
• Disability is primarily caused by environmental barriers (see Liasidou, 2014)
CONTRAST
• The Medical Model of Disability
• Focuses on personal tragedy of disablement; disease and injury manifest only within individual bodies; disease and injury must be
fixed or cured in order for individuals to regain normalcy again
• Impairment causes Disability
• Disablism is result of impairment

10. Theory: The Social Model of Disability
•The Social Model of Disability
http://ddsg.org.uk/taxi/social-model.html

11. Theory: The Social Model of Disability
•The Medical Model of Disability
http://ddsg.org.uk/taxi/medical-model.html

12. Theory: Biocultures Paradigm
•Biocultures Manifesto http://www.lennarddavis.com/manifesto.html
•“Culture and history must be rethought with an understanding of their inextricable, if highly
variable, relation to biology.”
•“Join the biological with the cultural.” interplay between social construction with
medical/biological construction
•Highlights from Biocultures Manifesto:
• Embodiment is necessarily biological, and knowledge is always embodied.
• Technology has become human; humans have become technologies.
• Biology, as a science, cannot exist outside culture; culture, as a practice, cannot exist outside biology.

13. Accessibility
Library &
Information
Science
Disability
Studies
Disability Rights
Activism

14. References
Davis, L. (2013). Introduction: Normality, Power and Culture. In L. J. Davis (Ed.), The disability studies
reader (4th ed., pp. 1-14). New York, NY: Routledge.
Davis, L. J. & Morris, D. B. (2007). Biocultures manifesto. New Literary History, 38(3). 411-418.
Retrieved from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20058015
Herther, N. K. (2015). Citation analysis and discoverability: A critical challenge for disability studies.
Disability & Society, 30(1), 130-152. DOI: 10.1080/09687599.2014.993061
Liasidou, A. (2014). Critical disability studies and socially just change in higher education. British
Journal of Special Education, 41(2), 120-135. DOI: 10.1111/1467-8578.12063
Shakespeare, T. (2013). The social model of disability. In L. J. Davis (Ed.), The disability studies reader
(4th ed., pp. 214-221). New York, NY: Routledge.
Thomas, C. (2014). Disability and impairment. In J. Swain, S. French, C. Barnes, & C. Thomas (Eds.),
Disabling barriers—Enabling environments (3rd ed., pp. 9-16). Los Angeles, CA: SAGE.