Reframing disability

This ABC article, written by Specialist Reporting Team’s Evan Young and national disability affairs reporter Nas Campanella, examines the shift from the medical model of disability (viewing disability as something to be "fixed") to the social model (recognising that societal barriers, not impairments, are what disable people).

It follows two stories: Nic Parsons, a blind lawyer who struggled with inaccessible workplace technology, and Jeremy Muir, a wheelchair user who faced barriers even while working as a disability advisor. Both emphasise that their disabilities don't limit them - poor design and accessibility do.

An excerpt from the article

Published Friday 8 August 2025

The way many people view disability forces those living with it to work within the limitations of a world not designed for them. Could a shift in mindset help move the dial on inclusion?

In 2014, Nic Parsons was fresh out of law school and excited about starting his career.

But the Sydney man didn’t realise a system based around justice would end up being so difficult to navigate.

While working as a paralegal in a government office years ago, he wasn’t able to use the department’s file management system because it wasn’t accessible to his screen reader.

Mr Parsons says filing documents late meant a business could go insolvent.

“I felt like I had my hands tied behind my back. I felt like I was letting people down because I was unable to do fairly simple things,” he says.

Mr Parsons ultimately decided to leave the “otherwise great” job and work at a small private firm with more “flexibility” to change its technology.

He spent his weekends learning how to code, creating a new accessible file management system for the whole organisation.

“At a larger firm, I don’t think that ever would have happened,” he says.

Today, Mr Parsons is a partner at a boutique CBD law firm and junior staffers file documents for him.

Thanks to a few changes and considerations — such as having time to get orientated with courtrooms — he’s able to succeed in his profession much more easily.

While he says he was happy as an “enthusiastic” junior staffer to come up with a solution to the tech issues he faced, other people with disability shouldn’t be expected to drive such changes in their workplaces.

“I don’t want to spend my time doing that because my time is more valuably spent actually doing the legal work.”

A different model

Many people would see Mr Parsons’ struggles as the result of his blindness.

That view is known as the medical model of disability, where someone’s barrier to accessibility stems from a medical difference or impairment that needs to be “fixed”.

But that’s not how Mr Parsons feels — he says those struggles were because of the design of the environment.

That position is known as the social model of disability, which posits that people with disability are disabled, not by their impairments, but by the world around them.

That includes cultural factors such as attitudes, discrimination, and physical barriers like a lack of ramps or accessible software.

“[The social model of disability] has been around since the 1980s, and it really shifted people’s thinking around the responsibility of society and the ways in which society can be changed to enable people with disability to participate on an equal basis as others,” Anne Kavanagh, a professor at the University of Melbourne’s School of Population and Global Health, says.

Anne Kavanagh says disability has been "over-medicalised".

The social and medical models are two of the many ways to view disability.

Professor Kavanagh says society has long “over-medicalised” disability.

“We have concentrated on the things that we can do to fix people’s disability … and that sees someone with disability as inherently lesser than someone who doesn’t have a disability,” she says.

“[It also sees] disability as a tragedy, as something an individual experiences, as something that makes them a source of pity, rather than thinking about the way in which society can actually empower people with disabilities.”

There are criticisms of the social model though, its simplicity being one of them.

While Professor Kavanagh says the social model “has a lot of merit”, it’s just a framework and doesn’t consider every barrier all people with disability come across.

For example, no number of changes to the environment around people living with chronic pain or fatigue will remove all the symptoms they experience.

“People with disabilities still experience impairments in their bodies, and no matter what you do, in some instances, that is going to impact on what you can do in life,” Professor Kavanagh says.

‘Felt like they didn’t want me’
Jeremy Muir knows how much easier society is to navigate when it’s been designed to include everyone.

A wheelchair user for more than 40 years, he’s the current CEO of Physical Disability Australia, which works with governments and organisations to improve accessibility for people with physical disabilities.

Jeremy Muir has been a wheelchair user for decades. Jeremy Muir says his wheelchair doesn't hinder his ability to go about his day, it helps him. 

A few years ago, Mr Muir was working as a disability advisor, helping people with disabilities access his organisation’s resources, common spaces and reasonable adjustments.

Ironically, his team was moved to an inaccessible older building where doors, bathrooms, the kitchen, and reception didn’t meet the 2010 building standards that aim to ensure all new buildings meet a minimum level of accessibility.

To go to the toilet, Mr Muir had to wheel into a different building.

“It felt like they didn’t want me to be part of the team. It was completely unnecessary,” he says.

In response to complaints, his workplace remodelled the building and upgraded its accessibility, though Mr Muir and his team still had to spend 12 months navigating the space until the upgrade was completed.

Mr Muir says accessing many other locations in his community is also difficult.

He often uses his wheelchair on the roads in the area where he lives in northern Brisbane, because the footpaths and curb cuts are “unsafe” and often muddy.

Things like getting a haircut also require much more planning than what it would for non-disabled people.

“[My local barber is] not accessible, so I have to drive to a few suburbs away to a major shopping centre … I have to have someone with me to do that — it’s not just inconvenient for me, it’s inconveniencing my partner,” he says.

Mr Muir is clear-eyed about what he sees to be the disabling factor in all of this.

Spoiler alert, it’s not his wheelchair.

Read the entire article on the ABC website

Source: abc.net.au. By the Specialist Reporting Team’s Evan Young and national disability affairs reporter Nas Campanella. Friday 8 August, 2025.