Disabilities in Media

Both disability studies and media studies deal with the relationship between disability and media, defining disability as a social construction. The social (construction) model makes a clear distinction between impairment (i.e., a physiological [Page 483]feature of an individual) and disability (i.e., a status imposed by society). With this social model, both academic fields abandon the dominant medical understanding of disability in Western societies. They do not consider disability as a medical, ontological fact about a person, instead defining it as a dynamic that results from environmental features (e.g., social, cultural, political, historical, material, physical) that act as barriers or create exclusion toward people with impairments. According to the social model, inclusion can be achieved if societal barriers are abolished. However, this model is criticized because ...