MEDICAL MODEL – Traditional way our
society views disability:
 Disability is a negative thing.
 Disability is a personal problem.
 Curing people or making them seem less
disabled will make their problems better.
 Professionals are the experts on disability.
 Greek and Roman eras: People with
disabilities were left to die
 Middle Ages: People with disabilities were
tortured
 Long history of institutionalization
 Holocaust: Hitler tested out his killing
machines on people with disabilities
through “euthanasia programs”
 Telethons and the “charity model” – people
with disabilities are to be cured and pitied
 Television and movies
 Sad, pitiful characters
 Bad guys and villians
 “Supercrips”
 What movies or TV shows have you watched that
may represent the medical model?
 Assisted suicide – Jack Kevorkian
 Other current events or current practices?
 Trying to appear as “normal” as possible
 Being embarrassed or ashamed of having a
disability
 Asking for help is a sign of weakness
 Being independent means doing everything
yourself
 Not wanting to associate with other people with
disabilities
 1950s and 1960s experienced civil rights
movements of other groups – Women’s Movement
and the Black Civil Rights Movement.
 People with disabilities began to rise against the
long history of exclusion and institutionalization
 People with disabilities were denied many basic
civil rights too, and they wanted access to quality
education (high school AND college),
employment, community living, stores,
restaurants, libraries
 Disability is only a difference, just like
gender or race.
 Being disabled is neither good nor bad; it’s
just part of who you are.
 Problems occur when a person with a
disability tries to function in an inaccessible
and unaccommodating society.
 A change in society (like making things
accessible for everyone or changing negative
attitudes) will lessen many of the problems
and issues that people with disabilities
experience.
 Change can come from a person with a
disability, an advocate, or anyone who wants
people with disabilities to be included
equally in society.
 504 Sit-in at the San Francisco Federal Building
 Ed Roberts fought to attend UC Berkeley and
live in the dorms, started the first Independent
Living Center
 ADAPT fight for accessible transportation and
deinstitutionalization
 Americans with Disabilities Act
 YO! Disabled and Proud: Disability History
Week and Anti-Bullying Campaigns
 Fighting to keep our rights and services
I lived from 1882 to 1945. I served for 3 terms
as President of the United States and helped
pull the country out of the Great
Depression. Due to polio, I could not walk
unassisted and I felt I had to hide my
disability from the American public.
I lived from 1939 to 1995. I am known as the “Father of
the Disability Rights Movement.” I contracted polio
when I was 14. UC Berkeley told me, “"We've tried
cripples before and it didn't work,” and the
Department of Rehab refused to serve me because I
was considered too severely disabled and labeled
unemployable. I received my B.A. and M.A. in political
science from the University of California at Berkeley
and when I was at UC Berkeley, together with my
friends in the Rolling Quads, we created the first
Disabled Students Program in the nation. I also
founded the first Center for Independent Living,
served as the Director of the California Department of
Rehabilitation, and co-founded the World Institute on
Disability.
I was born in 1947 and fought my entire life to be
included in the educational system. In 1970 I
founded Disabled in Action and moved to Berkeley
in 1973 where I served as deputy director of the
Center for Independent Living. I led the takeover
of the Federal Building offices in San Francisco to
get Secretary Califano to sign the Section 504
regulations of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. This
was the longest takeover of a federal building in
US history, lasting 26 days.
We ain’t where we wanna be;
We ain’t where we ougtha be;
We ain’t where we’re gonna be;
But we sure ain’t where we was!
- Sojunner Truth