CHAPTER 1 (in ‘Doing Disability Research ’ edited by Colin Barnes and Geof Mercer. Leeds, The Disability Press, pp. 1-14).

Over the last two decades disability activists have established the social model of disability as a comprehensive critique of mainstream academic theories and policy approaches. The disillusionment of disabled people and their organisations has also extended to research on disability. In a trenchant attack, Oliver (1992) condemns it as a 'rip-off that has done little, if anything, to confront the social oppression and isolation experienced by disabled people or initiate policies which have made a significant improvement in the quality of their lives. The significance of disability theory and practice lies in its radical challenge to the medical or individual model of disability. The latter is based on the assumption that the individual is 'disabled ' by their impairment, whereas the social model of disability reverses this causal chain to explore how socially constructed barriers (for example, in the design of buildings, modes of transport and communication, and discriminatory attitudes) have 'disabled ' people with a perceive