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Comment by the_other | Hacker News Reader

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> I find this to be a common for people who don’t think of themselves as disabled but are made disabled by bad interfaces

A lot of disabled people today subscribe to the "social model of disability" [0] rather than the "medical model". Under the social model, the obstacle is not some property of the individual experiencing an access issue, but are created by a system made by other people who didn't provide alternative access methods. Society and its inventions disable, rather than the individual's condition.

Clearly, disabled people have mental or physiological conditions that produce non-mainstream access needs. None of them deny that... but the social model invites us to take a society-wide ownership of this, and to better support a wider range of access needs by default.

In contrast, the medical model tends to situate the disability within the individual, based on their physiological condition. This tends to put the ownership on the individual (or their immediate carers), which in turn tends to perpetuate exclusion and access challenges.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_model_of_disability [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_model_of_disability

This sounds like a good way to think about some disabilities (specific recognised ways of "not being normal") and very misleading and unproductive for other disabilities.

A blind person can't participate in society to the same degree that a sighted person could, but the same is true of the entire world. We can (and arguably should) make their life easier by changing society, but unless you fix the root problem, they'll forever lack visual experiences.

From another angle, life without a human society still has its challenges. Adding a society removes some and adds new ones. Some people only have problems with these new challenges, some struggle with the old as well. These two scenarios should be distinguished, perhaps by applying the "social" and "medical" models appropriately.

> We can (and arguably should) make their life easier by changing society, but unless you fix the root problem, they'll forever lack visual experiences.

But not everybody wants to gain the experiences that would come from not having their condition. (This is especially true in the Deaf community[0], but can be seen in other communities as well.) And honestly? I feel that's a very valid viewpoint to have. The reason they "can't participate in society" to the same extent is because society doesn't let them!

Thankfully, people are starting to realise that.

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/08/understan...

I know about these tendencies, but I can't be sympathetic to them. (Re)gaining hearing is a physiological improvement; those with implants can even "turn off" noise. What these deaf people may lose is a specific deaf culture, held together by current necessity. But then the sides are flipped, and they are the ones perpetuating a non-inclusive (sub-)society.

A wider society that supports Deaf culture (or even just deaf ppl) would do things like provide email or SMS support for access to essential services instead of only providing telephone support and expecting the d/Deaf ppl to bring their own translators .

> social model of disability

Scott Alexander convincingly argues against that model and provides a better one: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/contra-the-social-model-of-...

Not that I disagree with Alexander here, but sometimes it feels like I'm taking crazy pills - this kind of integrated model has been WHO standard for over twenty years.

As he noted, many people claim to use an integrated model. It's a motte and bailey.

>I’ve never heard anyone willing to defend the actual Social Model the way it’s taught in every course, written on every website, and defined by every government agency. Everyone says they mean the Interactionist Model. Yet somehow, the official descriptions still say that disability is only social and not related to disease, and that you may only treat it with accommodations and not with medical care.

> the topic is taught in a way that only occasionally nods to such a compromise; more often the Medical Model is condemned as outdated and bigoted, and the Social Model introduced as the new, acceptable version that people should use

He quotes many sources that take the social model literally even in the 2020s

Yeah...I actually didn't want to get all, well, "geographical", but I can't help wonder if that's a US thing? At least here in Austria, the biopsychosocial model has been standard in teaching for a long time, and while it will still take some time for the generational shift in practice to conclude, monofactorial models have generally been accepted as being obsolete.

And regarding the BPS model: I stand corrected about my agreement - the point he makes about it I very much disagree with:

>This isn’t an exact match for a model of disability; the Biopsychosocial Model is most often used to explain the causes of illness, not how it impairs people. Still, I think there is a close enough analogy that it could be easily extended to disability.

He really shoud at least have read the Beginners Guide to the WHO ICF (which is deeply rooted in the BPSM) https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/icf-beginner-s-guide...

Both the model as a model of disability and a focus on impairment can be found front and center.

Considering that all of Scott's quoted sources are American, I wouldn't be surprised if your country doesn't have the same issue. I assure you that a lot of American institutions take the Social Model of Disability literally while claiming to use a multifactorial model.

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