In a social model [of disability], the interaction between the conditions of the body and the shapes of the world that makes disability into a lived experience, and therefore a matter not only for individuals but also for societies.

In a social model [of disability], the interaction between the conditions of the body and the shapes of the world that makes disability into a lived experience, and therefore a matter not only for individuals but also for societies

Disability gathers a dimensional we like nothing else, because disability is no more and no less than human needfulness, both personal and political. That's why the we that ties together this book is as tenuous as it is important: the collective that arises in the form of shared bodily vulnerability, the ways our physicality and our thriving are tied.

Instead of defining independence as 'self-sufficiency,' the standard for independence in the clinical setting where they'd been treated as patients, they claimed that their independence would be understood instead as 'self-determination.' The difference separated the dignity of authority and choice from the action itself.