A New Human Rights Model of Disability

Abstract

Disability studies provide the theoretical background for what we call the shift from the medical to the social model of disability. The social model of disability was developed as a critique to the medical model of disability. However, within disability studies, the social model of disability has been almost as strongly criticized as the medical model of disability. Michael Oliver, one of the founding fathers of the social model of disability, has recently called for a halt to this criticism, unless someone can come up with a better alternative. The CRPD offers such an alternative: the human rights model of disability. It is by no means the only alternative to the social model of disability (many models have been developed, among them recently the capability approach model), but the human rights model is an improvement on the social model of disability, and it is a tool to implement the CRPD.