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As the disabled people’s movement matured in the 1980s and 1990s, many people felt that the two models (medical and social) presented extreme positions. Although neither told the full story, both had a grain of truth – disability does have something to do with a person’s health condition but, at the same time, the society and environment in which one lives can strongly affect the impact that the condition has on one’s life. To understand how disability is viewed today, it is helpful to look at the way our understanding of the concept has evolved over time.
Throughout the 1990s, WHO led the development of a very different model, sometimes called the interactive model which, very simply, preserved the truth of both extreme positions. Disability is the result of the interaction between a health problem or impairment and the overall physical, human-built, attitudinal and social and political environment in which a person lives.
At WHO, this model of disability was the basis for the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health, endorsed by the World Health Assembly in 2001. It is also the basis for the characterization of disability and persons with disabilities in the CRPD.
