disability
the condition of being unable to perform as a consequence of physical or mental unfitness
Research draft, second pass
A second pass drafted this model: the structure a model of this thing needs, and what is known about it in the world. The line under this one says how the second half was obtained - researched against sources, or recalled without web access, in which case nothing here was read anywhere and every claim is a lead to verify. Unreviewed either way.
recalled by Codex without web access - no source was read
Researched by: Codex
Purpose and description
Enable an agent to recognise and describe disability in context, distinguish competing interpretations, and identify support or access actions without inferring a person's worth, competence or eligibility.
Disability is a limitation in functioning involving impairments, activity limitations or participation restrictions that arises through the interaction of a person's health condition with environmental and personal circumstances.
It can be Compare how explicitly named definitions would interpret the same situation without collapsing their disagreements.; Describe task-specific functioning and participation using the person's account and appropriately attributed assessments.; Identify barriers and propose accommodations for the person's review.; Track whether agreed support improves participation and whether needs change over time.; Explain which evidence a named recognition process requests without independently declaring eligibility.; Produce a consented access-needs summary limited to information relevant to its recipient..
Distinguishing features
A diagnosis or impairment alone does not establish the person's activity limitations, participation restrictions or support needs; these require separate contextual evidence.
Difficulty with one task must be distinguished from general inability, and performance with support must be distinguished from performance without it.
Disability self-identification, externally assessed functioning and formal eligibility can differ; none should silently substitute for another.
Ordinary task inexperience or lack of training is not sufficient evidence of disability; the relevant definition and evidence must be stated.
Successful participation with accommodations does not by itself establish that disability or the need for accommodations has ended.
Scope
+ Definitions of disability, their proponents and the purposes for which they are used
+ Activity limitations and participation restrictions in specified environments
+ Relationships among impairments, access barriers, facilitators and support
+ Variation across time, tasks and settings
+ Self-identification, disability assessment and formal recognition as distinct perspectives
+ Consent-based identification and evaluation of access needs
- Diagnosis, treatment and prognosis of particular diseases or impairments
- A person's identity, preferences and capabilities beyond disability-relevant context
- Detailed design specifications for assistive products or accessible infrastructure
- Administration of benefits, insurance claims and legal proceedings
- Organisation-wide accessibility compliance programmes
- General incapacity or equipment failure unrelated to human disability
Characteristics
- Definition and interpretive framework
- Named definition and version; impairment-focused, social, interactional, rights-based or another explicitly attributed framework Different frameworks locate disability and justify actions differently.
- Activity-specific functioning
- Named activity, assessment method and scale; record assistance, environment, effort and reference period A single global severity label can hide substantial differences among tasks and settings.
- Participation restriction
- Person's desired or required participation linked to the setting, restriction and supporting account Connects disability description to opportunities and goals that matter to the person.
- Barrier or facilitator
- Environmental, communication, attitudinal, institutional or technological factor linked to a specific effect Identifies conditions an agent may help change.
- Temporal pattern
- Continuous, episodic, fluctuating, changing or unknown, with dates and reference period A snapshot may misrepresent access needs across time.
- Support dependence
- Activity linked to assistance or accommodation, its availability and observed effect Makes visible the support that enables current participation.
- Self-identification and language preference
- Person's own description and preferred terminology; declined, not asked or unknown kept distinct Prevents an agent from imposing an identity or treating non-disclosure as absence.
- Formal recognition
- Scheme-specific status, authority, jurisdiction, decision date and review period; unknown where unverified Recognition under one scheme cannot automatically establish recognition under another.
Analytical facets
- substance
- abstract
- origin
- conceptual
- agency
- inert
- mobility
- not-applicable
- scale
- not-applicable
- affordances
- observable
Also called
+109
Where this came from
oewn:2024 · CC BY 4.0
Drafted structure
Bundle to layer to finding to question, as the second pass will find it: 6 bundles · 11 layers · 19 findings · 29 questions.
Definitions and boundaries Makes the meaning of disability explicit before applying it to a person or situation.
The registry definition centres inability and unfitness; the model must investigate its limits and competing interpretations rather than treat it as settled.
Competing frameworks
Separates accounts that locate disability in bodily or mental conditions, social barriers or their interaction.
Attributed definition
Record the definition being used, who advances it and the decision or inquiry it serves.
- Does this account locate disability primarily in impairment, exclusion, interaction or another explicitly described relationship? definition
- Who supplies this definition, in which source and version, and for what purpose? provenance
Instance boundaries
Tests disability against neighbouring concepts without assuming a universal threshold.
Disability versus associated condition
Distinguish disability from diagnosis, impairment, illness, temporary difficulty and task inexperience under the selected definition.
- What makes this situation an instance of disability under the selected account rather than evidence only of an associated condition? boundary
- How does this account handle temporary, episodic or non-apparent limitations, and which cases remain disputed? definition
Functioning and participation Describes what a person can do and participate in under specified conditions.
Disability cannot be adequately represented by an undifferentiated label of inability.
Activity-specific functioning
Locates difficulty in concrete tasks while preserving the conditions of observation.
Performance with context
Record task performance together with assistance, adaptations, effort, pain or fatigue where relevant and reported.
- Which activity is difficult, under what conditions, and how is the difficulty described or measured? measurement
- Does successful completion rely on assistance, extra time or a reported burden that the outcome alone conceals? measurement
Participation over time
Connects desired participation to changing needs and opportunities.
Participation and fluctuation
Record restrictions relative to the person's goals and distinguish typical, episodic and exceptional circumstances.
- Which desired activities or roles are restricted, and whose account establishes their importance? provenance
- Across what period and settings were fluctuations, frequency and recovery demands assessed? measurement
Barriers and accommodations Connects participation difficulties to environmental conditions and possible changes.
An actionable model must identify access conditions rather than locate every difficulty solely within the person.
Disabling conditions
Examines physical, communication, sensory, social and institutional obstacles in particular settings.
Barrier-effect link
Record the specific obstacle, its reported or observed effect and uncertainty about causation.
- Which feature of the setting obstructs access or participation, and for which activity? boundary
- What observation, comparison or first-person account supports the proposed link between this barrier and the restriction? provenance
Support effectiveness
Evaluates accommodations against the person's goals and practical availability.
Agreed access change
Identify acceptable changes and assess their effects without treating supported performance as proof that support is unnecessary.
- Which accommodation or assistance does the person want to try, and who can arrange it? action
- What change in access, effort or participation would demonstrate benefit, and is the support reliably available? measurement
Assessment and recognition Separates descriptive evidence from purpose-specific classification and administrative decisions.
Research measures, service assessments and formal recognition answer different questions and may produce different results.
Operationalisation
Makes assessment instruments and their limits inspectable.
Measure-purpose fit
Record what an instrument measures, its response conditions and the interpretation justified for this use.
- Which instrument, questions, thresholds and reference period operationalise disability here? measurement
- What evidence supports using this instrument with this population, language and communication method? provenance
Scheme-specific recognition
Attaches formal status to the authority and rules that establish it.
Bounded status
Keep recognition, denial, pending assessment and missing evidence specific to a named scheme.
- Which authority, jurisdiction, scheme and dated criteria govern this recognition decision? provenance
- What does this decision establish within that scheme, and which conclusions about disability or access needs remain unsupported? boundary
Agency and disclosure Preserves the person's voice and control over disability-related interpretation and information.
Disability descriptions can affect identity, access and treatment by others, so agency must shape how an agent records and acts.
Self-description
Distinguishes the person's account from labels or judgments supplied by others.
Voice and capability
Record preferred language and expressed choices without using disability status as a proxy for understanding or decision-making ability.
- How does the person describe their disability or access needs, and what terminology do they prefer? definition
- What communication or decision support would help the person express and act on their own preferences? action
Purpose-limited disclosure
Connects any sharing of disability information to an explicit need and authority.
Access-needs information
Distinguish information needed to provide access from unnecessary disclosure of diagnoses or personal history.
- What information does the intended recipient need to implement the requested access arrangement? boundary
- What permission or other verified authority permits sharing that information with this recipient for this purpose? action
Evidence and external alignment What the world already says about this thing, gathered so the model can be checked against it.
A model that cannot be lined up against existing standards, identifiers and practice cannot be adopted by anyone who already uses them.
Reported evidence
Findings from the breadth pass, kept separate from the structural claims.
Check these first
Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.
- The supplied sense reflects an individual-deficit framing; the definition here follows the broader interactional approach associated with the WHO ICF.
- Medical, social and human-rights approaches differ in emphasis and implications; they should not be treated as one uncontested definition.
- The listed kinds overlap and are not an exhaustive classification; legal applicability and instrument scoring should be checked before operational use.
- Which of these check these first hold for the sense of disability this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Kinds and varieties
Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.
- Physical or mobility disability
- Sensory disability
- Intellectual disability
- Psychosocial disability
- Cognitive disability
- Multiple disabilities
- Which of these kinds and varieties hold for the sense of disability this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Identifiers and schemes
Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.
- WHO International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) - Category codes beginning with b, s, d or e, with qualifiers - These represent body functions, body structures, activities and participation, and environmental factors; there is no single code covering disability as a whole.
- Which of these identifiers and schemes hold for the sense of disability this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Standards and regulation
Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.
- World Health Organization: International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF).
- United Nations: Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD).
- United States Congress: Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
- United Kingdom Parliament: Equality Act 2010.
- Which of these standards and regulation hold for the sense of disability this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Real-world use
Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.
- Assessing rehabilitation needs and changes in functioning.
- Planning accessibility, assistive technology and individual accommodations.
- Determining eligibility for disability benefits and support services under applicable rules.
- Measuring population differences in functioning and participation.
- Monitoring discrimination and barriers to education, employment and community life.
- Which of these real-world use hold for the sense of disability this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Typical measurements
Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.
- Functioning difficulties assessed using WHO Disability Assessment Schedule 2.0 (WHODAS 2.0) - 0-100 for the complex-scored summary, from no disability to full disability on the instrument - Dimensionless instrument score
- Severity represented by the generic ICF qualifier - 0-4, from no problem to complete problem; 8 and 9 indicate unspecified and not applicable - Ordinal category
- Which of these typical measurements hold for the sense of disability this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Failure modes and hazards
Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.
- Treating disability as global inability rather than limitations in particular activities and contexts.
- Inferring disability severity or support needs from diagnosis alone.
- Ignoring environmental barriers, accommodations and assistive technology when assessing functioning.
- Using assessment scores as automatic substitutes for individual evaluation or legal eligibility criteria.
- Excluding people whose disabilities are nonvisible, episodic or fluctuating.
- Which of these failure modes and hazards hold for the sense of disability this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Regional variation
Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.
- Legal definitions and eligibility thresholds differ across jurisdictions and across programs within a jurisdiction.
- Survey estimates vary with question wording, assessed domains, age coverage and severity thresholds.
- Language preferences, including person-first and identity-first terminology, vary across communities and individuals.
- Which of these regional variation hold for the sense of disability this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
Neighbouring kinds and how to tell them apart
Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.
- Impairment - An impairment concerns a body function or structure; disability also encompasses activity limitations and participation restrictions in context.
- Disease or disorder - A disease or disorder is a health condition; its diagnosis alone does not establish a person's functioning or disability.
- Incapacity for work - Work incapacity concerns ability to perform specified employment activities; disability extends beyond employment and does not imply inability to work.
- Dependence - Dependence concerns needing assistance; a disabled person may live independently, including through accessible environments and supports.
- Which of these neighbouring kinds and how to tell them apart hold for the sense of disability this model covers, and on what evidence? provenance
What the second pass must settle
- Which authoritative sources and disability-led perspectives should anchor the competing definitions, and how should the registry's inability-and-unfitness wording be qualified?
- Does an existing Vercy world model already own disability or its central relationships, requiring this registry entry to link to that model?
- How should temporary, episodic and fluctuating situations be represented where self-identification, assessment and formal definitions disagree?
- Which functioning and participation measures are suitable across different ages, languages and communication requirements, and where are their limitations documented?
- How should disagreements among first-person accounts, proxy reports and assessments remain visible without allowing one perspective to overwrite the others?