Definition of Disability

Having met the idea of disability, we can now define it more exactly and see how it is classified. It helps first to separate three terms that are often run together:

• Impairments are problems in body function or structure — for example, paralysis or blindness.
• Activity limitations are difficulties in executing activities — for example, walking or eating.
• Participation restrictions are problems with involvement in any area of life — for example, facing discrimination in employment or transport.

The ICF and its nine domains

The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) describes nine broad domains of functioning that a disability can affect:

1. Learning and applying knowledge
2. General tasks and demands
3. Communication
4. Basic physical mobility
5. Domestic life
6. Self-care (the activities of daily living)
7. Interpersonal interactions and relationships
8. Community, social and civic life, including employment
9. Other major life areas

Three models of disability

The ICF notes that several conceptual models try to explain disability, and it seeks to integrate them:

• The medical model views disability as a feature of the person, directly caused by disease, trauma or another health condition, and calls for individual medical treatment to "correct" the problem.
• The social model sees disability as a socially created problem — not an attribute of the individual at all — created by an unaccommodating environment and by social attitudes, and so demanding a political and environmental response.
• The biopsychosocial model synthesises what is true in both, without reducing the whole complex notion of disability to just one of its aspects. The ICF is based on this model, giving a coherent, integrated view of health that is at once biological, individual and social.

Sport as a right …