# An Identity Model for Providing Inclusive Services and Applications
## 1 Introduction  
Throughout history different models of disability have been imposed [1]: (1) a moral model which regards disability as the result of sin; (2) a medical model which regards disability as a defect or sickness; (3) a rehabilitation model which regards the disability as a deficiency that must be fixed; (4) a disability model, under which the problem is defined as a dominating attitude and the strong tendency for people to generalize about all persons with disabilities. We can observe how the problems of disabled people have been historically explained in terms of divine punishment, moral failing or even biological deficit. However, other perspectives such as the British political network _Union of Physically Impaired Against Segregation_ (UPIAS) ones consider a social model, in which civil rights, rather than charity or pity, are the way to solve the disability problems [2]. Disability needs to be accurately defined, especially because of its historical link with medicine and its social condition. Based on World Health Organization's (WHO) International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF) (WHO ICF: [[https://www.who.int/classifications/icf/en/](https://www.who.int/classifications/icf/en/)]([https://www.who.int/classifications/icf/en/](https://www.who.int/classifications/icf/en/))) conceptualisation, authors of [3] propose a new definition of disability in which the individual is not the axis of the problem: \"Disability is a difficulty in functioning at the body, person, or societal levels, in one or more life domains, as experienced by an individual with a health condition in interaction with contextual factors\". They believe this definition includes all aspects of disability, highlightsthe interactive dynamic nature of disability, and acknowledges the equally important roles of the person's state of health and environmental factors in the production and mediation of the disability experience. Some other approaches have emerged in recent years to challenge the historical oppression and exclusion of disabled people. For instance, authors of [4] propose the use of the new term _functional diversity_ to refer to disability. Trying to quantify the significance of this circumstance, and according to the WHO, around 15 percent of the world's population have some sort of disability [5]. In a digital world as the one in which we live, this fact is worrisome enough to affirm that Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) need to be accessible for everybody. The only way of ensuring an accessible world for all is to bear in mind everybody when designing services or applications. This is the main focus of digital accessibility. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) (W3C: [[https://www.w3.org/](https://www.w3.org/)]([https://www.w3.org/](https://www.w3.org/))), in its official definition of accessibility, explains that the Web can remove barriers to communication and interaction that many people face in the physical world. However, they add that when web sites, applications, technologies, or digital tools are badly designed, they can create even more barriers that exclude people from using the Web (W3C Accessibility definition: [[https://www.w3.org/standards/webdesign/accessibility](https://www.w3.org/standards/webdesign/accessibility)]([https://www.w3.org/standards/webdesign/accessibility](https://www.w3.org/standards/webdesign/accessibility))). In February 2019, Web Accessibility In Mind (WebAIM) conducted an accessibility evaluation of the home pages for the top 1,000,000 web sites. In that sample, 97.8% of the sites had automatically detectable Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) failures, with an average of 59.6 errors per page [6]. These data show that the actual WCAG 2.0 A/AA conformance level for the home pages for the most commonly accessed web sites is below 1%.