Disability and Society: Rights, Accessibility and Inclusion

Disability and society cannot be understood by looking only at an individual's body or health condition. A person may have a mobility, sensory, intellectual, developmental or psychosocial impairment, but whether that impairment prevents education, employment, political participation or independent living depends heavily on the environment around them.

A wheelchair user encounters one kind of life in a city with step-free transport, accessible housing and inclusive workplaces and another in a city built around stairs, inaccessible buses and employers who assume disability means inability. A blind student using a well-designed digital textbook may participate independently, while an inaccessible PDF can turn the same lesson into a barrier. A deaf patient may receive excellent healthcare when interpretation is available and inadequate care when communication access is ignored.

The World Health Organization therefore describes disability as arising through the interaction between health conditions and environmental and personal factors rather than treating it as a characteristic located entirely within the individual. WHO estimates that about 1.3 billion people—roughly 16% of the global population, or one person in six—experience significant disability. Population ageing and the growing prevalence of noncommunicable diseases mean disability will remain a major part of human life rather than a marginal policy issue. (who.int)

That scale makes disability relevant to almost every major institution: schools, workplaces, transport, healthcare, housing, technology, courts, elections and emergency planning.

The central question is therefore not simply how to treat or compensate people with impairments.

It is how societies should be designed when human bodies and minds have always varied—and will continue to vary—throughout the life course.

Disability Is Part of Human Variation, but Impairment and Disability Are Not Identical

People become disabled in many different ways.

Some impairments are present from birth. Others emerge through illness, injury, ageing or chronic disease. Some are stable, some progressive and some fluctuate considerably from day to day. Disability can be visible, as with some mobility impairments, or largely invisible, as with many chronic illnesses, learning disabilities, psychiatric conditions or neurological disorders.

This diversity makes broad generalisation difficult.

Two people with the same medical diagnosis may need very different forms of support. Someone with low vision may use magnification, while another blind person relies primarily on a screen reader. One wheelchair user may need only step-free access; another may require personal assistance as well. A person with an intellectual disability may need information in plain language, while someone with a hearing impairment may need captions or sign-language interpretation.

This is why disability policy cannot be organised around one archetypal disabled person.

WHO's contemporary framework is helpful because it distinguishes the underlying health condition from the environment in which the person lives. Disability emerges partly through the interaction between the two. (who.int)

That does not mean impairment is imaginary.

Pain, fatigue, paralysis, sensory loss, seizures, cognitive impairment or mental-health conditions can create real limitations even in an ideally accessible environment. Medical care, rehabilitation, assistive products and personal support may remain essential.

The social environment nevertheless determines how much those limitations become exclusion.

A broken lift may transform a manageable mobility impairment into complete exclusion from a workplace. A flexible schedule may allow someone with fluctuating fatigue to remain employed. Captioned video can eliminate a communication barrier for a deaf viewer without changing the viewer's hearing.

The most useful approach therefore avoids a false choice between medical reality and social barriers.

Both can matter at the same time.

The Medical, Social and Human-Rights Models Ask Different Questions

Different models of disability emphasise different parts of this relationship.

A traditional medical model tends to locate the central problem within the individual's impairment or health condition. Diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation and assistive technology therefore become the main responses.

This perspective can be extremely valuable when someone needs surgery, pain management, rehabilitation, hearing technology or treatment for an underlying condition.

Its limitation appears when it becomes the entire explanation for exclusion.

If a wheelchair user cannot enter a school, the medical question asks what happened to the person's mobility. The social question asks why the school was built with stairs as the only route inside.

The social model of disability, developed through disability-rights activism, shifted attention toward those barriers. It distinguishes impairment from social arrangements that disable people by assuming one standard body or mind.

That shift changed the political meaning of disability.

An inaccessible building stopped being merely unfortunate for a wheelchair user and became a design failure. Employment discrimination stopped being interpreted as an inevitable consequence of impairment and became an institutional problem. Lack of accessible communication became something services could change.

The human-rights model extends the analysis further.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, or CRPD, treats persons with disabilities as holders of rights rather than passive recipients of care. Its principles include dignity, individual autonomy, non-discrimination, participation, equality of opportunity, accessibility and respect for difference.

This changes the underlying question.

Instead of asking only “What help should society provide this person?”, a rights-based framework also asks “What is this person entitled to access, decide and participate in on an equal basis with others?”

Charity and rights can produce superficially similar actions while resting on very different foundations.

A business owner may voluntarily help a wheelchair user enter through a back entrance.

Accessibility asks why the person should have needed someone's goodwill in the first place.

Accessibility Removes Predictable Barriers Before Individuals Have to Request Exceptions

Accessibility is one of the most important distinctions within disability policy because it moves institutions from reactive accommodation toward proactive design.

Article 9 of the CRPD requires states to take measures to ensure equal access to the physical environment, transport, information, communication technologies and services open to the public. It specifically includes buildings, roads, schools, housing, medical facilities, workplaces and electronic services. (social.desa.un.org)

The principle is simple: when a barrier is predictable, institutions should not wait for every affected individual to rediscover it.

A public building should not wait until a wheelchair user arrives before considering whether there is a step-free entrance. A video platform should not treat captions as an improvised favour. A government website should not assume everyone can use a mouse, read small text or interpret complex forms.

Accessibility can involve physical design, digital interfaces, communication, information and organisational procedures.

The CRPD's definition of universal design describes products, environments, programmes and services designed to be usable by as many people as possible without needing specialised adaptation. At the same time, universal design does not eliminate the need for assistive devices or individual support where these remain necessary. (un.org)

This is an important qualification.

No universal design can anticipate every human need.

That is why reasonable accommodation exists alongside accessibility. The CRPD defines it as necessary and appropriate adjustments in a particular case that do not impose a disproportionate or undue burden. Denial of reasonable accommodation is itself recognised within the Convention's definition of disability discrimination. (un.org)

The difference can be illustrated through employment.

An accessible recruitment website benefits applicants before anyone asks for help.

An individual employee may still require flexible hours, screen-reading software, sign-language interpretation or an adapted workstation.

Accessibility redesigns the default.

Accommodation addresses needs the default cannot completely anticipate.

Education Shows Why Physical Presence Is Not the Same as Inclusion

Children with disabilities are among the groups most vulnerable to exclusion from education.

UNICEF estimates that nearly 240 million children worldwide have some form of disability. Its data emphasise that disability includes several domains of functioning, including psychosocial functioning, rather than being limited to visible physical impairments. (unicef.org)

Barriers can begin long before classroom instruction.

School buildings may be inaccessible. Transport may be unavailable. Families may face stigma or low expectations. Teachers may lack training. Learning materials may not work with assistive technologies. Children may be placed in segregated settings even when they could learn in mainstream schools with appropriate support.

Simply moving a disabled child into a mainstream classroom therefore does not necessarily create inclusion.

UNICEF's Learning is for Everyone global report, published in June 2026, examined disability-inclusive education across several countries and concluded that successful inclusion requires education systems to recognise learner needs, reform institutional practices and provide sufficient resources for participation and learning. The report combines system analysis with the experiences of children, families, teachers and policymakers. (unicef.org)

This distinction matters.

A student can be physically present while educationally excluded.

A deaf child placed in a classroom without communication support is not necessarily receiving equal education. A student with dyslexia may sit beside peers while instructional materials remain unusable. A child with a mobility impairment may attend classes but be excluded from laboratories, sports or school trips.

Inclusive education therefore involves the system adapting to learner variation rather than treating deviation from the assumed learner as an individual failure.

Universal design for learning, accessible materials, trained teachers, assistive technology, communication support and reasonable accommodation can all contribute.

Transition planning matters too.

Support that exists in school can disappear abruptly when a student enters university, vocational training or employment. If every transition forces people to rebuild access from the beginning, institutional fragmentation itself becomes a barrier.

Employment Gaps Cannot Be Explained Simply by Ability

Disability also affects participation in labour markets, but lower employment should not automatically be interpreted as evidence that disabled people are less capable of work.

ILO research documents persistent structural disparities. In 2025 the organisation reported that labour-market participation among persons with disabilities was around 30% lower than among people without disabilities. Disabled young people were also substantially more likely to be outside education, employment or training. (ilo.org)

A 2024 ILO working paper found that disabled workers face higher unemployment, greater reliance on self-employment and lower wages, and that these differences cannot be explained simply by education, experience or occupation. Limited workplace accommodation and discrimination are among the factors identified. (ilo.org)

Barriers can appear before an applicant ever enters a workplace.

Recruitment websites may be inaccessible. Job descriptions may include unnecessary physical requirements. Interviews may depend on communication formats that exclude some candidates. Employers may assume accommodation is expensive without investigating actual needs.

Transport and education barriers then compound the problem.

A person who cannot reach a workplace reliably because transport is inaccessible may appear to have an employment problem when the underlying failure lies partly in transport policy.

Good workplace inclusion therefore focuses on essential job functions rather than inherited assumptions about exactly how the work must be performed.

Remote work, flexible scheduling, alternative communication methods, adapted workstations and assistive technology can enable participation without lowering performance standards.

The ILO's current framework on disability-inclusive employment emphasises coordinated action across employers, legislation, education, employment services, public procurement and social protection. Workplace inclusion cannot be achieved by employers alone when other institutions continue to create barriers. (ilo.org)

That systems perspective is essential.

A company can create an accessible office while inaccessible public transport still prevents employees from reaching it.

Health Inequality Is Not an Automatic Consequence of Disability

Disabled people often have worse health outcomes than people without disabilities, but WHO emphasises that much of this inequality arises from avoidable and unfair conditions, not simply from the impairment itself.

Its global health-equity report estimates that some persons with disabilities may die up to 20 years earlier than people without disabilities. Barriers include stigma, poverty, inaccessible services, exclusion from health-promotion programmes and discrimination within health systems. (who.int)

This distinction prevents an important analytical error.

If someone with a disability experiences poor health, the outcome should not automatically be attributed to the disability.

Perhaps a screening programme was inaccessible.

Perhaps clinical equipment could not accommodate the person's body.

Perhaps doctors attributed new symptoms to an existing disability and missed another condition.

Perhaps transportation prevented regular appointments.

Perhaps public-health information was not offered in an accessible format.

WHO's current disability material explicitly identifies inaccessible health facilities, transportation barriers and systemic discrimination as contributors to health inequity. (who.int)

Communication is therefore part of healthcare access.

A clinic with a ramp can still exclude a deaf patient if no communication support exists. Written instructions inaccessible to a blind patient can undermine treatment. Highly complex communication can create unnecessary barriers for some people with intellectual or cognitive disabilities.

Disability-inclusive healthcare is not therefore a specialised service operating separately from mainstream medicine.

Mainstream healthcare itself has to become accessible.

Assistive Technology Works Only When a System Exists Around the Device

Assistive technology can transform independence.

Wheelchairs, hearing aids, prostheses, spectacles, communication devices, screen readers, speech-recognition tools and cognitive-support technologies can expand access to education, employment and community life.

WHO estimates that more than 2.5 billion people currently need one or more assistive products, with demand expected to exceed 3.5 billion by 2050 as populations age and noncommunicable diseases become more prevalent. Yet access remains extremely uneven and can be as low as 3% in some settings. (who.int)

A device alone is not the entire intervention.

A wheelchair may require assessment, fitting, maintenance and repair. A hearing aid needs appropriate selection and follow-up. Communication technology may require training. Software needs to remain compatible with other systems.

A sophisticated assistive product that cannot be repaired locally may eventually become unusable.

WHO therefore treats assistive technology as a system involving people, policy, products, provision and personnel rather than simply distributing equipment. (who.int)

This is another illustration of the wider principle running throughout disability policy.

Access rarely depends on one object.

It depends on whether the institutions around the object continue to support its use.

Independent Living Means Control, Not the Absence of Assistance

The phrase independent living can be misunderstood as the ability to perform every activity without help.

That is not the disability-rights meaning.

Article 19 of the CRPD recognises the right of persons with disabilities to live in the community, choose where and with whom they live and access services—including personal assistance—needed for community participation. (un.org)

Independence therefore concerns control over one's life, not isolation from human support.

People without disabilities depend continuously on other people, technology and public infrastructure. Food systems, transport, healthcare, childcare and electricity make everyday autonomy possible. Disability can make some forms of support more visible, but visible dependence does not automatically eliminate autonomy.

A person using daily personal assistance may have substantial control over where they live, work and socialise.

Another person living in an institution may receive extensive care while having almost no meaningful control over daily decisions.

The difference is autonomy.

This is why the history of institutionalisation raises major rights questions.

Large residential institutions were often justified as places of care and protection but could isolate disabled people from families, communities, education and ordinary social life. Rights-based approaches increasingly emphasise community living and support that enables choice.

Closing institutions without creating housing, personal assistance, healthcare and community services is not enough.

Deinstitutionalisation is a systems transition, not simply a change of address.

Legal Capacity Determines Whether Rights Can Actually Be Exercised

Autonomy also depends on whether a person is recognised as someone capable of making legally meaningful decisions.

Historically, people with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities have sometimes been denied authority over finances, healthcare, contracts, relationships or residence through guardianship and similar systems.

Article 12 of the CRPD states that persons with disabilities enjoy legal capacity on an equal basis with others and should have access to support they may require in exercising that capacity. Measures affecting legal capacity should include safeguards against abuse and respect the person's rights, will and preferences. (un.org)

This has driven international debate over supported decision-making.

Support may involve accessible information, communication assistance, trusted supporters or other arrangements that help a person understand and express decisions rather than automatically transferring authority to somebody else.

The practical details can be difficult, particularly where severe cognitive impairment or risk of exploitation is involved.

But the rights principle is important.

Requiring assistance to make a decision does not automatically mean a person's preferences should disappear from the decision.

Protection and autonomy therefore have to be designed together.

Families Can Provide Essential Support Without Replacing the Person's Voice

Families often perform enormous amounts of unpaid disability support.

They assist with healthcare, transport, communication, administration, personal care and advocacy. In societies where formal services are weak, family support may determine whether a disabled person can remain at home, attend school or participate in community life.

That contribution deserves recognition.

But family protection can also become overprotection.

Parents, spouses or relatives may make decisions without consulting the disabled person, restrict risk excessively or assume that dependence on support means the person cannot exercise meaningful choice.

This tension becomes especially difficult when support needs are substantial.

A rights-based approach does not require abandoning family involvement.

It requires centring the disabled person's preferences to the greatest extent possible and developing support arrangements that expand rather than unnecessarily replace autonomy.

Care policy also affects carers themselves.

Unpaid support work can reduce employment, income and social participation, often with disproportionate effects on women. Personal-assistance services, respite care, accessible transport and community-based services therefore affect the opportunities of both disabled people and family members.

Disability policy and care policy cannot be fully separated.

Poverty and Disability Can Reinforce One Another

Disability can increase the cost of everyday life.

Households may pay more for transport, healthcare, assistive products, personal assistance, accessible housing or specialised services. At the same time, barriers to education and employment can reduce household income.

Poverty can then worsen disability-related disadvantage by limiting access to healthcare, nutrition, assistive technology, safe housing and education.

This creates a feedback loop.

Social protection can help break it, but programme design matters.

Benefits that require people to demonstrate permanent helplessness can discourage work or punish improvement. Inaccessible application systems can exclude the very people the programme is supposed to support. Benefits may also fail to reflect the additional costs associated with disability.

ILO data released around the 2025 Global Disability Summit indicated that only about one-third of people with severe disabilities worldwide received adequate social-protection coverage through disability benefits. (ilo.org)

The goal of good social protection should therefore be security with participation, not a forced choice between income support and autonomy.

Transport, Housing and Public Space Decide How Far Rights Can Travel

Disability inclusion can fail even when schools and workplaces themselves are accessible.

People have to reach them.

WHO reports that inaccessible or unaffordable transportation creates dramatically greater barriers for persons with disabilities than for people without disabilities. (who.int)

Transport therefore acts as connective infrastructure.

A step-free workplace has limited value if the train station cannot be entered. Specialist healthcare remains inaccessible if the patient cannot reach the clinic. Political meetings are not genuinely open if transportation excludes participants before they arrive.

Housing creates similar constraints.

Accessible housing affects whether someone can live independently, receive personal assistance, form relationships, care for children or remain in the community as they age. A shortage of suitable housing can push people toward institutions or unsafe arrangements even where other services exist.

Built environments encode assumptions.

Narrow doors, stairs, high counters, poor acoustics, complex signage and inaccessible toilets are not biologically inevitable. They are design choices based on expectations about users.

Accessibility makes those expectations visible.

And once design expands to accommodate greater human variation, many benefits extend beyond people who identify as disabled.

Curb cuts help wheelchair users but also parents pushing prams and workers moving equipment. Captions help deaf viewers and people watching videos in noisy environments. Clear signage can assist people with cognitive impairments, tourists and anyone navigating an unfamiliar place.

Disability-inclusive design often becomes better public design.

Digital Technology Can Remove Barriers—and Recreate Them at Scale

Digital technology has expanded possibilities for disability inclusion.

Screen readers make text accessible through speech or Braille. Speech recognition can provide alternative input. Captions and transcription can increase communication access. Remote work and telehealth can reduce some transportation barriers. Navigation systems and communication devices can increase independence.

But digitalisation can also turn one inaccessible interface into a barrier affecting millions of people simultaneously.

An online banking service that cannot be used by a screen reader can exclude customers even when every physical branch is accessible. A CAPTCHA dependent entirely on visual recognition creates a predictable barrier. A workplace system requiring rapid mouse movement may exclude people who could otherwise perform the job.

Accessibility therefore has to move upstream into software and product development rather than being applied after launch.

Artificial intelligence adds another layer.

AI can improve automated captioning, speech generation, image description and personalised interfaces. It may make previously expensive assistive functions much more widely available.

The same systems can create discrimination.

Automated hiring models trained on historical employment data may learn patterns associated with disability and treat them as evidence of lower suitability. Voice-recognition systems may work poorly for atypical speech. Vision systems may fail to recognise mobility devices or different movement patterns.

The solution is not to classify AI as inherently inclusive or discriminatory.

It is to include disabled users in design, testing and governance, evaluate performance across different forms of disability and provide workable alternatives when automated systems fail.

Accessibility is part of technical quality.

Political Participation Requires Accessible Democracy

The right to vote has little practical value when ballots, polling places or campaign information cannot be used.

Article 29 of the CRPD requires states to ensure that voting procedures, facilities and materials are accessible and usable and that persons with disabilities can vote, stand for election and participate in political and public life on an equal basis with others. (un.org)

Participation extends beyond election day.

Public consultations, political-party meetings, government websites and civic organisations also need to be accessible. Restrictive legal-capacity rules can create additional barriers when people are denied political rights because of disability.

This connects directly with one of the most influential principles of the disability-rights movement:

Nothing about us without us.

The principle rejects the idea that policy expertise belongs only to doctors, administrators, charities or family members.

People who live with barriers possess expertise about how systems actually work.

WHO's 2026 work on disability health equity explicitly emphasises meaningful involvement of organisations of persons with disabilities in health decision-making and describes that participation as both a rights obligation and a route toward more effective policy. (who.int)

Consultation should therefore occur before a policy is finalised, not after institutions have already made the important decisions.

Participation is different from endorsement.

Disabled people may disagree with one another, just as any large group does. Their inclusion does not guarantee one unanimous policy answer.

It ensures that people affected by the policy participate in defining the problem.

Disability Data Need to Measure Function and Participation, Not Just Diagnoses

Poor data can make exclusion invisible.

A government may know how many people receive a disability benefit while knowing far less about how many children with disabilities are out of school, how employment differs by type of impairment or whether public transport is usable.

Older measurement systems sometimes relied heavily on whether a person had been medically diagnosed or officially certified as disabled.

That can miss people whose functional difficulties are substantial but undiagnosed or whose environment determines whether limitations become disabling.

Contemporary disability measurement increasingly examines functioning across areas such as seeing, hearing, mobility, cognition, communication and self-care.

UNICEF's current estimate of nearly 240 million children with disabilities reflects a broader approach that includes multiple functional domains, including psychosocial difficulties. (unicef.org)

Measurement still requires caution.

Disability is heterogeneous, and aggregate statistics can hide large differences. Gender, income, geography, age, race, caste, ethnicity and migration status can change what the same impairment means in practice.

A wealthy urban professional with a mobility impairment and a poor rural child with the same broad impairment category may face profoundly different barriers.

Intersectionality therefore changes disability policy from “What do disabled people need?” to a more precise question:

Which disabled people are being excluded, from what, and by which mechanisms?

Media Representation Shapes Expectations Long Before Institutions Make Decisions

The social meaning of disability is also produced through culture.

Disabled people have often been represented as tragic victims, heroic inspirations or permanent dependants. Each stereotype reduces ordinary human complexity.

The tragedy narrative treats disability itself as the defining misfortune.

The inspiration narrative may celebrate disabled people merely for completing ordinary activities.

The dependency narrative assumes disabled people are primarily recipients of care rather than workers, parents, citizens, professionals, artists and leaders.

These representations matter because expectations influence institutional decisions.

A teacher who assumes a disabled student cannot succeed may provide fewer opportunities. An employer influenced by dependency stereotypes may never discover what accommodation would make a job accessible. Families can become overly restrictive because cultural narratives present risk avoidance as the only form of care.

Better representation therefore does not require pretending disability never creates difficulty.

It means representing a wider range of lives.

Disabled people can experience pain, joy, dependence, autonomy, ambition, failure, work, family and ordinary boredom just as other people do.

Disability should be visible without becoming the only fact about the person.

Emergency Planning Reveals Whether Inclusion Was Really Built Into the System

Disasters frequently expose accessibility problems that were tolerated during ordinary times.

Emergency alerts may be inaccessible to deaf or blind people. Evacuation plans may assume everyone can use stairs. Shelters may lack accessible toilets or space for mobility devices. Emergency medication and personal assistance can be disrupted.

The same institutional problem appeared repeatedly during public-health emergencies: systems designed without disabled people in mind had to improvise accessibility after a crisis had already begun.

Article 9 of the CRPD explicitly includes access to emergency services within accessibility obligations. (social.desa.un.org)

Inclusive emergency planning therefore has to happen before emergencies.

Disabled people and their representative organisations need to participate in developing warning systems, evacuation procedures, shelters and continuity plans.

This illustrates a broader principle:

Accessibility added during crisis is much harder than accessibility designed beforehand.

Disability Inclusion Is Systems Design, Not a Programme at the Edge of Government

One of the biggest policy mistakes is treating disability as the responsibility of one specialist department.

A disability ministry or programme cannot compensate for inaccessible schools, housing, transport, healthcare, courts and technology.

Disability has to be mainstreamed across major policy areas while specialist services remain available where they are genuinely needed.

Public procurement is one powerful example.

Governments purchase large quantities of software, transport, buildings and communication systems. When contracts require accessibility from the beginning, suppliers gain incentives to make inclusive design a standard feature rather than an expensive custom addition.

Budgeting matters for the same reason.

Commitments to interpretation, accessible formats, building retrofits, assistive products or personal assistance remain symbolic if no funds are allocated to provide them.

Inclusion has costs.

So does exclusion.

Unemployment, preventable illness, unnecessary institutionalisation and dependence created by inaccessible systems also impose economic and social costs.

The correct question is not whether accessibility costs money.

Almost every functioning public system does.

The question is whether society wants to finance institutions that more people can actually use.

Disability and Society Ultimately Comes Down to Equal Participation

No single model captures every aspect of disability.

Medicine matters because impairments and health conditions can require treatment.

The social model matters because environments can turn manageable differences into exclusion.

The human-rights model matters because disabled people are citizens and rights holders, not merely patients or recipients of care.

Assistive technology matters.

So do accessible transport, inclusive education, employment, housing, communication, social protection and legal capacity.

These approaches are complementary when they are organised around the person's own goals.

The mistake is to treat disability as though the desired outcome were to make every disabled person resemble a presumed non-disabled norm.

A more useful goal is participation.

Can the person study?

Work?

Travel?

Communicate?

Receive healthcare?

Choose where to live?

Build relationships?

Make decisions?

Participate in politics and culture?

Access justice?

Use technology?

And when support is required, does that support expand the person's control over life or replace it unnecessarily?

These are institutional questions as much as medical ones.

The disability-rights movement changed public thinking by making that distinction visible.

A flight of stairs can disable.

So can an inaccessible website.

So can an employer's assumption.

So can a legal system that ignores someone's preferences.

The impairment may belong to the individual.

The barrier does not have to.

That is why disability inclusion is ultimately not a specialised act of kindness toward a small minority.

With roughly one in six people globally experiencing significant disability—and almost everyone likely to encounter changing physical or cognitive abilities at some point in life—designing for human variation is ordinary social planning. (who.int)

A disability-inclusive society does not deny impairment, pain or support needs.

It refuses to treat preventable exclusion as the natural consequence of them.

The measure of progress is therefore not how generously society cares for disabled people.

It is whether disabled people can exercise rights, make choices and participate with everyone else—and help design the institutions in which that participation occurs.