UK Disability History Month
UK DHM
Introduction
2024 Disability, Livelihood and Employment
Disability has been seen for many years as synonymous with non-employment or unemployment. This is not true. Throughout most of history, disabled people have, wherever and whenever they can, sought a means of surviving largely without the state.
UKDHM use a social model/human rights approach to viewing disabled people and the disablism they were subjected to over time, even though this was not the thinking then. Impairment has always been part of the human experience, whether caused by accident, fighting and war, disease, genetics or malnutrition. It is the functional loss due to these causes that makes life harder and often more painful than for most people. Cultural and social explanations of the phenomena of impairment have generally been the biggest barrier to people with impairments.
