Disability Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Disability - Essay Example political, academic and social, the concept of disability enjoys greater significance and widespread interest. However, this very attribute of universality has led to various debates within the fields of health, politics, social science as well as philosophy with regards to its definition and scope. Academicians, scholars, health care providers and policy makers have debated to define the term as well as the manner in which it can be measured. However, regardless of the vastness of its scope, greater consensus have now seemed to emerge, which is evident from the various definitions provided by the WHO (WHO, 2001), ICF (ICF, 2001), and the UN convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN Commission of Human Rights, 2006). The international community’s which have defined the term agree on disability being a culmination of complex interactions between medical abnormalities, physical health restrictions, as well as the attitudes of the external environment which restricts their complete and total inclusion within the mainstream society. â€Å"Disability is an umbrella term, covering impairments, activity limitations, and participation restrictions. Impairment is a problem in body function or structure; an activity limitation is a difficulty encountered by an individual in executing a task or action; while a participation restriction is a problem experienced by an individual in involvement in life situations. Thus disability is a complex phenomenon, reflecting an interaction between features of a person’s body and features of the society in which he or she lives.† (WHO, 2010). â€Å"A disability is any restriction or lack (resulting from an impairment) of ability to perform an activity in the manner or within the range considered normal for a human being† (Disabled World, 2010). In conventional terms, the issue of disability have been invariably defined and viewed as a medical