Models of Disability

There are a plethora of models that have been used to explain disability, from various perspectives. Understanding the models of disability can help you ensure your work is disability-affirming and can assist you in understanding how collaborators and partners understand disablement. In this video you’ll learn about major models of disability and how they influence our policy and systems decisions, both overtly and covertly. Knowing these models will ultimately help you make the invisible visible, orient towards solutions that align with your values, and help you to ensure you and collaborators are sharing a unified vision of what it means to support those with disabilities. Rebecca Martin of Rutgers University leads a discussion of how organizations can form strategic networks to strengthen their disability-inclusion work while staying true to the disability mantra “nothing about us without us.”