The medical model defines disability in terms of biological impairments, which are caused by medically diagnosed genetic disorders, disease, trauma, or other health conditions. In the medical model disability is treated as a biological problem that diminishes quality of life and needs to be treated with professional care.

In the medical model of disability, the condition is the “problem” and requires following:

• Different schools
• Different transportation
• Different house designs
• Back entrance to buildings
• Less desirable jobs
• Fewer opportunities
• Lower expectations
• Social workers
• Therapists
• Specialists
• Physicians

The legal definition of disabilities often relies on the assumption of medical model. The person must meet a certain threshold of biological impairment to be legally designated as “disabled”. This legal/medical definition is often used to decide whether a person should receive certain government financial benefits, or accommodations from the employer, school or in university.

Strengths of the Medical Model

The medical model clearly states the biological reality of disabilities. That helps medical professionals make important decisions in terms of treatment. Similarly, it helps government and institutions to take informed decisions to aid and accommodations to the person.

Weakness of the Medical Model

The medical model is frequently criticized by disability advocates.

1. First it exclusively focuses only on the biology of the person. It does not go far to impact the design decisions in our social environment.
2. There is a psychological impact caused by this distinction. Essentially labeling and stigmatizing the person as different and “less than” the rest of the population.
3. There can be a chance when the definitions are too narrow and too exclusive for some people with disabilities. That can result in the denied benefits that they need.
4. The qualifying process adds a level of inconvenient bureaucracy to their lives. Having to prove it repeatedly can be time consuming and dehumanizing.

Social Model

The social model is a direct response to the medical model. The medical model points out the disability entirely on the person with a disability, but the social model points out that society creates disabling conditions. To a considerable extent, “disability” is an avoidable condition caused by poor design.

The social model points the following environments which can cases the problem:

1. Not integrated schools
2. Not accessible transportation
3. Not accessible houses
4. Not equal access to the buildings
5. Limited choice of jobs
6. Limited opportunities
7. Higher expectations
8. Public planners
9. Product designers
10. Architects
11. Web designers

The social model doesn’t deny the biological components, but it merely points out that the inclusive design can remove the barriers that people with disabilities face in their everyday life. It provides a meaningful context for accessibility professionals. It creates a model for people who create the environments around us that are enabling and not disabling for people with different physical abilities.

Strengths of the Social Model

It removes the stigma often associated with physical impairments. It expects society to create inclusive environments, and not the people with disabilities need to accept the lower quality of life simply because their bodies do not live to “normal” expectations. The social model also empowers designers to think broadly about usability to include everyone.

Weakness of the Social Model

The social model can de-emphasize the physical reality of a disability too much. The physical identity of a disabled person is an important part of one’s identity and they shouldn’t be afraid to talk about it. Accepting and “owning” one’s disability can be healthy from an emotional and psychological perspective.

Biopsychosocial Model

This model accounts for both the social and biomedical models of disability. First conceptualized by George Engel in 1977, it suggests that to understand a person’s medical condition it is not simply the biological factors that need to be considered, but also the psychological and social factors.

This model is the basis of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF), a publication by the World Health Organization in 2002.

Economic Model

This model views disabilities from the prospective of the economic impact of the disability on individuals, employers, the state, and welfare programs.

While this model does well to recognize the bodily limitations impact work, it may also create a sense of stigma. We can see how in this way; the economic model is closely related to the charity model. In addition, many people have disabilities that significantly impact their ability to work, but they do not meet the legal definition of having a disability and they do not qualify for various assistance programs.

Functional Solutions Model

It is related to the Social Model of disability. It focuses on a practical approach to disability by identifying the functional impairments, or limitations, which are a result of disability. This model then seeks out solutions for eradicating these limitations through advancement in technology or methodology.

Businesses and Accessibility professionals create and sell accessibility solutions by taking a functional solution approach.

Strengths of the Functional Solutions Model

This model focuses on results and takes a real-world approach to finding the solutions that work, without getting hung up on theoretical or political questions. This models emphasis on getting things done and improve the lives of people with disabilities.

Weakness of the Functional Solutions Model

If accessibility professionals are too focused on creating practical solutions, they may miss opportunities to address the broader social context.

Social Identity or Cultural Affiliation Model

People with disabilities may develop a sense of personal identity through consorting with others who share the same life experience. For example, social identity is so strong between the people who are deaf and who share the same linguistic experiences as sign language. There are many different sign languages, each with its own vocabulary and grammar. Like the people who speak the same language, people who are deaf also like to spend more time with each other, so it’s often harder for them to befriend hearing people. There are even deaf theater productions, deaf television shows and other avenues of deaf artistic expressions that help to strengthen deaf cultural bonds.

Strengths of the Social Identity or Cultural Affiliation Model

Self-Acceptance and Empowerment: Having a support network of friends with disabilities can help fully accept one’s disability. That can be a particularly important part of one’s emotional and psychological well-being.

Political Strength: They can gain political strength by forming alliances and advocacy networks by raising a collective voice, rather than merely as individuals.

Weakness of the Social identity of Cultural Affiliation Model

Strongly identifying with other people with disabilities may partly be a result of feeling excluded from the rest of society.

Charity or Tragedy Model

This model treats disabilities as unfortunate. People without disabilities take pity on those with disabilities and set up fundraisers, projects, assistance, and other interventions to improve the condition. This approach can be offensive to some people with disabilities. It sets up an unequal power balance, and an unhealthy social relationship between groups of people.

It is much healthier to think of people with disabilities first as people, just like everyone else. We all deserve to be treated as equals.

Strengths of the Charity or Tragedy Model

This model can create a sense of empathy in people without disabilities and inspire them to genuinely assist people with disabilities.

Weakness of the Charity or Tragedy Model

It encourages unequal social and political relationships between people.

Other Models

Affirmation Model

Affirmation model is like social identity or cultural affiliation model, in that it encourages people with disabilities to affirm their identity and feel comfortable as normal in their own skin.

Sociopolitical Model

The sociopolitical model is more of an activist model that emphasizes the need for human rights for people with disabilities.

Religious/Modal Model

Religious model assumes that disabilities are act of God and given to people as a punishment for actions of either the individual or their parent. Some religions which believe in past lives or Karma more tend to believe in this model.

Expert or Professional Model

The expert of professional model can be seen as the extension of medical model, in which disabilities are meant to be treated or managed by people with expertise and credentials.

Rehabilitation Model

The rehabilitation model is also a variation of the medical model, with an emphasis on therapy or rehabilitation to improve the person’s ability to function and compensate for the disability.

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ARIA stands for “Accessible Rich Internet Applications”

What all browsers support ARIA?

• Firefox 3.6 or greater
• Chrome
• Safari
• Edge
• Opera
• IE 9 or greater

ARIA-enabled screen readers?

• JAWS 10 or greater
• NVDA 2011.2 or greater
• VoiceOver on OSX Lion or newer

Basic Disability Concepts

Our Diverse Abilities

Roughly 1 in every 5 people (about 20%) has a disability of some kind. We can categorize the disabilities in three main categories:

Recognizable Disabilities

It mainly consists the physical aspects which are visible to everyone around you in most cases. If somebody is blind, do not have the ability to move most of their body due to permanent injury, or somebody is missing one or both of their arms and legs.

Hidden Disabilities

Hidden disabilities are not always immediately obvious. If somebody is deaf, have reading disorders or somebody experience seizures from time to time can’t be seen even they are setting beside you.

Temporary Disabilities

Those disabilities which are caused by accidents/injury or surgery, which reduces person’s mobility.

Age-Related Disabilities

With age people tend to loose our sight, our heading, our mobility, and our congnition.

What disabilities affect the use of web?

The disabilities that matter most in term of their effect on web use are disabilities in eyes, ears, hands, and brain.

Print or Reading Disability

A bling person cannot read a newspaper same as a sighted person can’t read a blank newspaper. A blind person can’t read any printed text on Building Signs, Packaging, Business cards or Postal mail sent to their home without some sorf of help or assistive technology. Printed materials are everywhere which creates a big problem for a blind person.

What are the common methods blind people use to read?

• A friend or a family member could read it for them
• Listen to a recording
• Braille copy if available
• Find radio or television version of the same item.

All of these methods work but still they are dependent on others or there is a limitation for person or audio version to be available. Braille versions are expensive and less than 10% Americans can read braille.

In this chellenge, Digital Text and “Screen Readers” solves the problem. With the invention of computers, text became digital, and evantually speech synthesizers were invented, allowing blind people to listen to text read out loud by the computer itself. Screen Readers allow blind people to access information independently, without having to have direct assistance from anyone else. It gives them independence.

But for this the content have to be accissible. That is the situations sometimes people with disabilities face in this digital age. Many resources are still not created with accessibility in mind. They exlcude people who are blind, and people who have other type of disabilities.

Assistive Technologies

Assistive technologies are the tools and technologies designed specifically to compensate people with disabilities for their lack of ability in certain tasks. One of the most common assistive technologies are wheelchair, canes and hearing aid. But if you look closely, most of us do not have a perfect vision. So we use Glasses or contacts to aid our vision. But those are so common that we take them for granted that they are normal. But imperfect vision is a disability as well when not corrected.

Assistive Technologies and the Web

Over the time technologies have been inveted to aid disabilities for computer and web use. Following table give us a brief summary of few.

Assistive technologies don’t solve everything, they just increase the possibilities for the people with disabilties to use web, which can be impossible otherwise. It is like a wheelchair and a cane in real world, which gives them some possibility but they are unable to fill the gaps with those technologies. So it is extreamly important for poeple to create the enviornments and webpages with accessibility in mind. The web world is not the problem, the web world is a part of the solution.

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