7 people walk into a room. Dimly lit, with spotlights on 7 high chairs and a mic in the middle.
A voice comes from nowhere. No one can see who it belongs to. Call them the Narrator.
The Narrator asks: "What is a disability?"
The first person answers without hesitation. "Disabilities are medical conditions. They need to be diagnosed, treated, managed, and ideally cured. The goal is to get as close to normal functioning as possible." This is the Medical Model.
The second person cuts in. "That framing misses the point entirely. Disability isn’t the problem—the world is. We built environments, systems, and cultures around a narrow idea of what a body or mind should be able to do. In a world designed for everyone, most of what we call disability wouldn’t disable anyone." This is the Social Model.
The Medical Model shakes their head. "You can’t redesign your way out of biology. The problem is in the person, not the pavement"
Before the Social Model can respond, a third voice speaks. "You’re both right, actually. Disability is biological and social and psychological all at once. The body matters. So does the world it moves through. So does the person’s inner experience of both." This is the Biopsychosocial Model.
A fourth person leans forward. "I want to talk about what this costs. Disability affects whether people can work, what employers can build, what governments have to fund. Anything that affects the bottom line is worth paying attention to." This is the Economic Model.
A fifth person nods along. "Exactly, and once we know what’s missing, we can build solutions. Assistive technology, accessible platforms, functional workarounds. People are being excluded from digital life and we have the tools to fix that." This is the Functional Solution Model.
There’s a pause. Then a sixth voice, quieter than the rest. "I want to push back on all of this. You’re all assuming disability is a problem to solve. I have a disability. I’m not waiting to be fixed. My disability is part of who I am—it’s given me community, identity, perspective. Every attempt to ’cure’ me or ’accommodate’ me without asking what I actually need just makes me feel more othered." This is the Social Identity and Cultural Affiliation Model.
The seventh person speaks last. "I hear you, but people with disabilities need our help. They’re vulnerable. Supporting them is the right thing to do. It’s about compassion." This is the Charity Model.
The room erupts.
The Narrator snaps their fingers. Silence.
"Each of you explains disability from a different value system," the Narrator says. "The only time any of you is truly wrong is when you think your model is the only one.
The Medical Model is useful for understanding biological causes and managing pain and permanent conditions. It becomes harmful when it treats disability as pure deficit, something to be corrected rather than accommodated.
The Social Model names something true: exclusion is structural. Disability is produced, in large part, by systems built around a narrow idea of normal. It can struggle, though, when biological realities need to be addressed and there’s no room for that in the framework.
The Biopsychosocial Model holds the most complexity, which is also its weakness. When everything matters equally, prioritization becomes political and difficult.
The Economic Model sometimes funds real support for disabled people. It also withdraws that support the moment it can’t justify the cost. Moral right doesn’t enter the calculation.
The Functional Solutions Model builds things that help. But it can reduce people to their tasks, measuring success by what someone can complete rather than whether they’re actually included.
The Social Identity Model pushes back on stigma and centres the voices of disabled people themselves. It challenges the idea that disability is inherently something to overcome, and that matters.
The Charity Model means well. But it centres the giver’s sense of doing good, and leaves disabled people in a passive role—grateful recipients rather than people with agency."
The End.
A note on this piece
I wrote this while studying for the CPACC—as a way of keeping the models straight in my own head, and making them feel like something other than a list to memorise.
These aren’t moral positions. They’re lenses. Each one shaped by different assumptions about what disability is, where it comes from, and what the world owes people who have one.
Most harm happens when a single model dominates—in policy, in healthcare, in product decisions—without anyone asking which lens is actually being applied, and why, and at whose expense.