6. Social model

Contents: Impairment versus disability, origins and development, consideration of external factors, criticism of the continuing focus on deficits.

The social model draws a clear distinction between impairment and disability. Whilst impairments are understood as individual physical or psychological characteristics, disability arises only as a result of societal barriers – such as architectural, communicative or organisational exclusions (Hirschberg, 2022, pp. 97–99). It can be described as a counter-model to the individual/medical model.

The social model was developed in the 1970s within the British disability movement. It is regarded as a central pillar of disability studies, as it explicitly attributes responsibility for disability to social structures. The focus here is not on the impairment itself, but on the social conditions and physical barriers that prevent inclusion. In the social model, disability is understood differently from individual or medical approaches. It is not regarded as a personal suffering or a disorder affecting an individual, but as the result of social structures and conditions. Proponents of this model assume that disability arises where social conditions, institutional regulations and environmental factors systematically disadvantage or exclude people (Hirschberg, 2022, p. 98).

A key criticism of the social model is that it continues to view disability as a problem that needs to be resolved. Even though the focus has shifted from individual causes to societal conditions, the underlying assumption remains that disability is a disruptive factor that must be ‘resolved’ either through the adaptation of the individual or through changes to social structures. In this sense, both the individual and the social models share a deficit-oriented basic understanding, as disability is regarded in both approaches as something that ought not to exist (Egen & Waldhoff, 2023, p. 194).