A Disability is a lack of ability relative to a personal or group standard or norm. In reality there is often simply a spectrum of ability.

Information About Disabilities

A Disability is a lack of ability relative to a personal or group standard or norm. In reality there is often simply a spectrum of ability.

Disability may involve physical impairment, sensory impairment, cognitive or intellectual impairment, mental disorder (also known as psychiatric or psychosocial disability), or various types of chronic disease. A disability may occur during a person's lifetime or may be present from birth.

The World Health Organization estimates that there are as many as one billion persons with disabilities worldwide.

The medical model of disability:

A model by which illness or disability is the result of a physical condition, is intrinsic to the individual (it is part of that individual’s own body), may reduce the individual's quality of life, and causes clear disadvantages to the individual. As a result, curing or managing illness or disability revolves around identifying the illness or disability, understanding it and learning to control and alter its course. For further information see Definitions of The Models of Disability

The disability rights movement aims to improve the quality of life of people with disabilities.

For people with physical disabilities accessibility and safety are primary issues that this movement works to reform. Access to public areas such as city streets and public buildings and restrooms are some of the more visible changes brought about in recent decades.

The social model of disability:

Proposes that barriers and prejudice and exclusion by society (purposely or inadvertently) are the ultimate factors defining who is disabled and who is not in a particular society. It recognizes that while some people have physical, intellectual, or psychological differences from a statistical mean, which may sometimes be impairments, these do not have to lead to disability unless society fails to accommodate and include them in the way it would those who are 'normal.'

Current issues and debates surrounding "disability" include social and political rights, social inclusion and citizenship.

In developed countries the debate has moved beyond a concern about the perceived cost of maintaining dependent people with a disability to an effort to find effective ways of ensuring people with a disability can participate in and contribute to society in all spheres of life.