Disability Studies as an academic discipline explores the nature, meaning, and repercussions of disability. By focusing on medical and social constructs of disability, disability studies tend to be multidisciplinary, intersecting the humanities and social sciences. It nobly aims to improve the civil rights of persons living with disabilities and better their overall quality of life. Challenging the established and entrenched perspective that disability is a defect only remediable by medical approaches is an extremely involving exercise. The mechanisms by which this academic field seeks to de-stigmatize disease and impairments require a comprehensive application of humanities and social sciences.
Disability studies dwell on examining the nature of the disability and its consequences in the backdrop of sociocultural, political, and ethical factors, making it a social science. Disability encompasses physical and mental impairments related to cognitive, intellectual capacity, and physical or sensory problems. By seeking to broaden and advance understanding of physical or psychological inadequacy, disability studies contribute to social change for those living with disabilities. Furthermore, through its questioning of the notion of normal-abnormal binary, this academic field supposes that a wide spectrum of human variations is normal. Similar to African American studies and women’s studies, which were born out of the civil rights movement, disability studies also trace their roots to the 1960s disability rights movement. As such, disability studies identify more with the academic discipline of social sciences.
While it still appears as new in academic specialties, disability studies allow students, teachers, activists, and researchers to interact with the subject matter from diverse disciplinary perspectives. Advancing such issues as prioritizing leadership posts held by physically or mentally disabled persons requires understanding society. However, the background information on social organization and why people perform the activities they do is the basis of social science.