From blindness to visual impairment: terminological typology and the Social Model of Disability

The Social Model of Disability holds that persons are impaired for a number of reasons, but that it is only by society that they are disabled. As a product of that disabling society and a key component in psychocultural representation, it is terminology on which the paper focuses. Consisting of ableism, disablement and impairment, a tripartite typology is proposed, the first phase of which is rendered outmoded, the second regressive and the third progressive. This hierarchical categorisation provides a basis for the suggestion that terminology like blindness and the blind might be rejected in favour of that which denotes only visual impairment, the progressive terminology that corresponds with insights gained from the Social Model of Disability.