It is the society which constructs economic, social, health, architectural, legal, cultural and other barriers in order to deliberately prevent people with impairments enjoy full benefits of the society. The social model shifts the emphasis from a disabled individual to the society and its disabling attitudes and environment. The disabled are people with one or more physical, mental and sensory impairments which limit one or more of the basic life activities such as seeing, hearing, talking, walking, using hands, understanding, learning, communicating, etc. On the other hand, it is equally difficult to accommodate the expectations of those who use a flexible definition to include even those at the border line. There are hundreds of different disabilities and there are as many causes of these.
Some people are born with disabilities, others become disabled later on in their lives.
Some disabilities exhibit themselves only periodically like fits and seizures, others are constant conditions and are life-long. The severity of some stay the same. Others get progressively worse like muscular dystrophy and cystic fibrosis. Some disabilities can be controlled and cured, others still baffle the experts. Thus, finding a consensus on the different and frequently varying definitions of disabilities, whether sophisticated or practical, has never been easy.