Disability

Abstract

There is no clear dividing line between those who have a disability and the rest of society. Everybody experiences disability to some extent at some point in their lives and most people are ‘able’ in some situations and not in others. The line from ‘normality’ to ‘abnormality’ is a continuum with no sharp cut-off point. Labelling some people as ‘the disabled’ is part of the problem of disability. Whilst it is impossible to reach any clear and unambiguous definition of disability, it includes conditions like blindness, deafness, congenital abnormalities, arthritis and loss of ability resulting from accidents. Several writers make a distinction between a disability and a handicap. For example, Ann Shearer suggests that disability must be taken as given, but handicap, ‘is something that is imposed on that disability to make it more limiting than it must necessarily be’.¹ The extent to which a disability is a handicap depends on a number of factors such as the type of job a person has, the services which exist to help, the attitudes of society and the personality of the person with the disability. Ann Shearer illustrates this point by arguing that not being able to run for a bus would not be a handicap if buses waited for their passengers.