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For at least three decades, disability rights activists have challenged exclusionary and stigmatizing social processes that constrain people with disabilities, an effort highlighted by the 1990 enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act. However, all environmental barriers to participation by people with disabilities may not be eliminated by a policy strategy that focuses on discrimination and fails to address many forms of oppression that do not fall under legal definitions of discrimination. The human variation model of disability defines disability as the systematic mismatch between physical and mental attributes of individuals and the present (but not the potential) ability of social institutions to accommodate those attributes. Although rights-based approaches remain necessary to overcome the barriers facing many Americans with disabilities, a policy strategy that builds on a human variation approach may further efforts to eliminate disability oppression.
The effectiveness of any strategy for addressing the current status of Americans with disabilities depends on identifying the nature of the problems they face. Different conceptions of the problem are necessarily linked to different solutions, either through legally imposed remedies or through broader social and political action (Hahn, 1985b). For example, a medical model of disability typically views the disadvantage associated with having disability as inherent in an individual's impairment; the solution to this problem is individual rehabilitation or, when necessary, income support to compensate for the disabled individual's inability to function.
For over three decades, disability rights activists and organizations linked to the disability rights and independent living movements have challenged exclusionary and stigmatizing social processes that constrain people with disabilities (Barnartt, Schriner, & Scotch, in press). According to the ideology underlying these protests, disability is defined in sociopolitical terms, identifying barriers faced by people with disabilities as imposed and subject to change, rather than intrinsically linked to the presence of an impairment (Hahn, 1985b). Disability rights activists have rejected the assumption that having a disability inevitably means that someone is unable to live independently or participate in everyday economic, political, or social life, an assumption that has become a self-fulfilling prophecy embedded in employment practices, the design and operation of public accommodations, and incentives in public benefit systems.
The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA; see Note) characterizes the disadvantaged social and economic position...