Experience of Disability: Costa Rica

As many other countries, Costa Rica has been influenced by the traditional, medical, and rehabilitation models that led societies to consider a disability as a “problem” and the person with disability as the cause of that problem. Those models reinforced the view of people with disabilities as dependent, ill, incompetent, limited, or even subnormal. The concept of being “normal” is a fallacy that still persists in the imagination of [Page 663]those who are not aware that being different is in fact being “normal.” The purpose of this entry is to share with the reader a descriptive analysis of the experience of living with a disability in Costa Rica.

During the past decade, the experience of disability in Costa Rica has been changing, an ongoing but slow process. Quantitative as well as qualitative changes have had an important impact on the public and private services offered by various sectors of the Costa Rican society such as education, health, employment, culture and recreational activities as well as the accessibility to information and communication. Considering living conditions from a human rights development perspective and the increasing participation of disabled people and their families' organizations have contributed to these changes.

The social and economical context in which the majority of people with disability live in Costa Rica, in many cases conditions of extreme poverty, has influenced the quality of life of disabled people and is still limiting their access to services particularly in their own communities and in rural areas of the country. Furthermore, these economic limitations have definitely interfered with the efforts being made in terms of legislation and the promotion of human rights and opportunities. Despite all the actions taken to change attitudes and awareness about the needs of disabled people, experiencing disability in Costa Rica is closely related to and cannot be separated from economic and social development.

According to the Ombudsman Office, the population with disabilities is among the most excluded sectors of Costa Rican society. Two surveys provide data about the general population and the percentage of disabled people. The Multipurpose Household Survey, conducted in 1998, reported that the population of the country totaled 3,340,909, of whom 261,371 persons, approximately 8 percent, had a disability. The National Census included for the first time information about disabled persons, and it reported that the total population was 3,810,179 and persons with a disability were approximately 5 percent of the general population. The difference in percentages was interpreted as methodological, since there are factors such as how disability is understood by the interviewers and who provides the information.

Based on the country's economic conditions, there is no doubt that the social model, as it applies to disability experience in Costa Rica, inevitably leads us to concentrate on the priorities established by the government regarding social policies, the provision of additional funds to provide accessible services, and the inclusion of specific indicators related to disability experience as an effective measure to monitor the national development with regard to disabled people's lives.

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