English Essay on HANDICAPPE
Answers
Handicape is a critical social-spatial issue (Golledge, 1993). An attempt to define what disability is, will leave us with different point of views as a result of it complex nature. Different academic scholar, government agencies, international communities and disabled people’s organisation has tried to underscore the suitable and functional definition of disability through an underlying and critique approaches. Despite many attempts to define disability in an encompassing terms, the challenges remains what depict an individual as disabled and who should belong to this class?
Geiecker, Otto, Momm and Willi (2001), stated that lot of people probably knows what disability is all about. They could be able to recognise an individual as being disabled, either as a result of the disability being visible or because they are aware of a particular medical condition that lends itself to be called disability. There are different views to the concept and definitions of disability, a common view is that having disability makes an individual less capable of performing variety of activities. (Geiecker et al.). However, what exactly the term disability means is less easy to ascertain.
In defining what disability means, it is important to try to understand what disability means to people. In doing so, we tend to effectively establish the different approaches to define disability as suggested by Drum (2014) in the journal of Dynamic of Disability and Chronic Condition. Drum attempted to define disability by using three basic approaches to explain what disability thus mean. He states that in the last three decades, this three basic approaches has always been used- diagnostic, functional or social approaches. The diagnostic glide path stresses an individual inherent trauma, disease or health related impairment. For instance a spinal cord or loss of limb trauma is a disability under this approach. The functional approach is when a person with a spinal cord or loss of limb trauma is ineffectual to live freely from external control and constraint and the view of social approach concentrates on the obstacles a person contend with when interacting with the environment.
It may seem strange that there are still so many dispute relating to given an explicit definition to disability, so many years after the passage of different disability Acts and Laws, emerging scores of disabled people’s movement and disability discourse globally. It is understandable when one looks at the definite interconnections of terms pertaining to disability without an attempt of circumventing. Following Mike Oliver (1996) I contend that a generally accepted definition of disability may be impossible. There have been various attempt to provide and develop a conceptual schema to define and expatiate the concept of disability with relationship between illness, impairment and handicap, this has led to the adoption of different definition of disability.
The WHO International Classification of Impairment, Disability and Handicap describes disability in the context of health experiences as ‘any restriction or lack (resulting from impairment) of ability to perform an activity in the manner or within the range considered normal to a human being’ (Wood, 1980), the Unions of the Physical Impaired Against Segregation(UPIAS) see disability as ‘the disadvantage or restriction of activity caused by a contemporary social organisation which takes no or little account of people who have physical impairment and thus excludes them from the main streams of social activities’ (UPIAS, 1976),the United Nation Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities(UNCRPD)uses the following definition: ‘persons with disabilities include those that have long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairment which in interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with other'(UNCRPD, 1993)while the Disabled People’s International which encompasses the disabled people themselves defines disability as ‘ the loss or limitation of opportunities to take part in the normal life of the community on an equal level with others due to physical and social barriers’ (DPI, 1982).