Ableism


 * This article deals primarily with discrimination faced by those with physical disabilities. For details on the types of discrimination faced by those with emotional issues and the like, see Mentalism (discrimination).

Ableism is a form of discrimination or social prejudice against people with physical disabilities. It is known by many names, including disability discrimination, physicalism, handicapism, mentalism, and disability oppression. It is also known as disablism, although there is some dispute as to whether ableism and disablism are the same concept.

Definition of the concept
The ableist world-view is that the able-bodied are the norm in society, and that people who have disabilities must strive to become that norm. A disability is thus, inherently, a bad thing that must be overcome. The ablist worldview holds that disability is an error, a mistake, or a failing, rather than a simple consequence of human diversity.

Fiona A Kumari Campbell, Senior Lecturer in Disability Studies at Griffith University, draws a distinction between disablism and ableism. Disablism, she notes, has been the traditional focus of study within the field of disability studies. Disablism promotes the unequal treatment of the (physically) disabled versus the able-bodied. It marks the disabled as the Other, and works from the perspective of the able-bodied.

Citing prior work , Campbell acknowledges that the concept of ableism is, as of 2009, not clearly defined in the literature and has "limited definitional or conceptual specifity". She herself distinguishes between ableism and disablism, defining the former as: A network of beliefs, processes and practices that produces a particular kind of self and body (the corporeal standard) that is projected as the perfect, species-typical, and therefore essential and fully human. Disability is then cast as a diminished state of being human.

Other definitions of ableism include those of Vera Chouinard (professor of geography at McMaster University), who defines it as "ideas, practices, institutions, and social relations that presume able-bodiedness, and by so doing, construct persons with disabilities as marginalized &#91;&hellip;&#93; and largely invisible 'others'" and Ron Amundson (professor of philosophy at the University of Hawaii at Hilo) and Gayle Taira, who define it as "a doctrine that falsely treats impairments as inherently and naturally horrible and blames the impairments themselves for the problems experienced by the people who have them".

Is said
An ableist or disablist society is said to be one based on the classic human assumption that non-disabled individuals are the only standard of living. Ableism is a dispositional belief but is gaining wider currency in social science circles: advocates say ableist tendencies are means by which mainstream society intentionally or unintentionally denigrates, devalues, and oppresses those with disabilities, and privileges those without disabilities.

Advocates of the concept contend that continued ableism/disablism is not just a social-discrimination matter; it physically results in public and private architectural structures, places, and even services, including education and social work, that are built only to serve able-bodied people. In response, political activists advocating inclusive and especially universal design structures and services—groups quite often themselves composed of disabled people—agitate and protest in a manner similar to anti-racist and anti-sexist activist movements.

Inclusion is ableism's opposite. Instead of tending towards inaccessibility, isolation, pity, paternalism and factors giving low self-esteem to people with disabilities, an inclusive society tends toward sociability and interdependency between the able-bodied and the disabled.

Architectural issues
The presumption that everyone (or at least everyone who matters) is non-disabled is said to encourage environments that are inaccessible to disabled people. For example, a building may be built with stairs but no lift or wheelchair ramps. Even if a disabled person who is ambulatory can and does use stairs, the stairs may not have handrails to hold on to, making the process of climbing and descending them either impossible or with serious risk of falling. Such practices can also make getting into public transportation such as metro systems difficult because many of these systems also do not have lifts, unless they are relatively newly constructed or have had a major refurbishment.

Ideological issues
In extreme cases, morality, worth and intelligence may even be equated to being able-bodied or able-minded, while disability is conflated with immorality, stupidity, and worthlessness, and disabled lives may be devalued to the point that some in a society may believe that one is better off dead than living with disability. The eugenics movement of the 19th and 20th centuries, which took its most extreme form in Nazi Germany with Action T4, was a product of this belief, and some believe the ‘right to die’ movement is also an outgrowth of ableist beliefs.

Laws opposing ableist standards
In the U.S., Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) enacted into law certain civil penalties for failing to make a public places comply with access codes known as the ADA Access Guidelines (ADAAG); this law also helped expand the use of certain adaptive devices, such as TTYs (phone systems for the deaf/speech impaired), some computer-related hardware and software, and ramps or lifts on public transportation buses and private automobiles. In the UK, meanwhile, the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act and Disability Discrimination Act 2005 attempt the same.

However, neither of these laws requires all buildings constructed before the date of the Act to be essentially retroactively modified to fit the physical directives of the Act. Instead, these directives are applied to three general categories of buildings: 1) existing Government administration buildings and structures regardless of age; 2) all newly-constructed buildings and structures; and, 3) significantly renovated and/or refurbished buildings and structures. Therefore, in general, very few older structures are modified according to to the new requirements.

Sometimes, under their own power and for their own reasons, a business or service that does not have to modify its building structure to fit the accessibility requirements will modify it anyway. But other times, this does not happen, and the building continues to be fundamentally inaccessible to the disabled individual(s) in question.