“Cripping” the Commons: Tracing the Developments and Contours of the Disability Rights Movement

Disability has traditionally been treated as something to mock, to hide, and too often to destroy. Wealthy Romans retained “fools” for their amusement, a practice which extended to court jesters in medieval times. These roles went to the fortunate ones. Infanticide for those born with impairments was pervasive in ancient times and still practiced some today, amidst many gut-wrenching debates. Physical difference was regarded as inferior, particularly by the ancient Romans and Greeks who highly valued aesthetics and intellectual and physical prowess. The civil law and common law alike are premised on enduring legal taxonomies which determine who or what is a person and who or what is not. Historically, children born disabled occupied a more liminal legal state, the most severely deformed of whom were even labeled “monsters that do not have human form” and who were not considered legal persons.

The promulgation of Christianity advanced care practices for people with disabilities to a degree on the basis of charity. The first asylum was opened by the Roman Catholic Church to care for infants abandoned at its door, although the supports barely exceed those to sustain life, if they even accomplished that. Many people believed that birthing a child with a disability was punishment for sins committed by the parents. The prominence of this belief in Christian cultures created an association of sin and devilry with the disabled children themselves, leading to their abandonment. Living conditions for most disabled people remained abysmal, being shunned from society, ridiculed, and forced to beg on the streets.

Wealthier families sometimes took it upon themselves to care for their disabled children at home. Many more, who lived past infancy, became homeless or were put into poorhouses, almshouses, institutions, asylums, and prisons. Schools for “the feebleminded” were transformed in the later 1800s into asylums and prisons, and the “pupils” became “inmates” and were effectively slaves. The equivalence to prison, if not their reality, remained prevalent for at least a century and continues for too many people in the world today. The horrors, known and unknown, that have occurred in these institutions have pervaded social psyche by becoming common settings of ghost stories and horror films. Most of us cannot fathom the pain these people have endured.

As the era of institutionalization and industrialization progressed in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, the living conditions for individuals with disabilities worsened. The industrial era witnessed the rise of eugenics. Disabled people were one of the first groups targeted by the Nazis. Doctors advocated for forced sterilization. Social Darwinism and “survival of the fittest” were prominent, even as eugenics lost its scientific backing (although some would fervently argue that it is still present today in the form of genetic editing and other bioethical dilemmas). During this time, the medical or pathology model of disability (explained in more detail in the next section) was prominent and used to justify experimentation, institutionalization, and objectification of many disabled minorities.

These conditions remained relatively constant until both World Wars rendered large swaths of people disabled. When formerly strong and able-bodied men returned home broken in mind and body, people took more notice of the terrible living conditions people with disabilities were relegated to. The wars also brought about advancements in technology and medicine, including plastic surgery.

This era saw a reawakening of hope for people with disabilities in the Parents’ Movement. Concerned for their children’s well-being, parents organized to improve institutions, create community services, expand special education and employment opportunities, initiate legislation, and challenge conventional wisdom. Disability was finally beginning to become destigmatized and detached from the association to sin. But children grow up, and with enhanced social perceptions of disabled persons’ agency stoked by powerful grassroots activism, this method has come to face valid critiques of being a charity model which perpetually paternalizes people with disabilities.

Following the Parents’ Movement, people with disabilities began initiating their own movements in the late 1960s and 1970s. Social clubs and consumer groups emerged in most provinces, shifting away from parental and church-based charitable organizations. By the end of the 1970s, these groups came together under the banner of the national organization, the Coalition of Provincial Organizations of the Handicapped, which has since been renamed the Council of Canadians with Disabilities.

The 1960s also saw the rise of the Civil Rights Movement. African Americans fighting for their rights helped other civil rights movements, such as the LGBTQ+ and women’s rights movements, also gain momentum. Hallmark pieces of legislation passed during this time include the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Canada Pension Plan of 1965 for retired, disabled, and survivors’ benefits—one of the first policies directly aimed at supporting people with disabilities in Canada. Part II explores other major legislative protections passed for disabled people.

Disability has historically been and remains highly stigmatized, although there have been immense improvements over the decades and centuries. Disability justice perpetually battles against this stigmatization, harmful stereotypes, and irrational fears. For example, disfigurement is a common trope in Hollywood films for villains, such as the Joker, the Phantom of the Opera, and more recently Anne Hathaway’s role in The Witches whose hands look like those who have the condition referred to as split hands or ectrodactyly. A recent podcast series called “Body Language” by CBC’s Ideas deeply explores this topic in various ways. They discuss what our idea of “ugly” is associated with, its culturally-embedded origins, implications for what it means for vulnerable people, and how social and political questions impact our bodily realities. Clearly, there is still a long way to go before people with disabilities feel fully included and respected in society, and the best way to do so is to strengthen relationships, foster empathy, and hand the mic, the clipboard, the podium over to disabled people.

PART II

Models and Conceptions of Disability

 With the never-ending complexity and changing nature of bodies, culture, and language, our understandings of what disability is, and what it is not, are always shifting, and there are many lenses through which to view it—scientific, political, social, and personal. Many definitions and lenses overlap in meaning and chronological use, flowing in and out of use. Furthermore, there are many conditions which may or may not be considered a disability, depending on culture and context, such as hallucinations, left-handedness, pregnancy, obesity, chronic pain, and even being a second language learner.

With these shifting nuances in mind, some commonly accepted definitions of two key terms are as follows (see here for more definitions):

Disability: the loss or limitation of opportunities to take part in society on an equal level with others due to social and environmental barriers.

Impairment: an injury, illness, or congenital condition that causes or is likely to cause a loss or difference of physiological or psychological function.

A disabled person is a person with an impairment who experiences disability. Disability is the result of negative interactions that take place between a person with an impairment and her or his social environment. Impairment is thus part of a negative interaction, but it is not the cause of, nor does it justify, disability.

The framework of the distinction between these definitions is very important—positioning disability as a result of societal limitations inhibiting certain individuals relative to others helps us understand that while we all have to manipulate our surroundings to live out our lives which may be more difficult for some people, there are social barriers which can preclude full participation in our communities. This approach is essentially the social model of disability, which views embodiments as unique and disability as stemming from social oppression. This oppression can take many forms, including insecure housing, limited job opportunities, social isolation, and pervasive cultural aversion.

This perception espoused in the social model shifts the locus of control to social structures rather than individual conditions. But it has not come about without many long-fought battles and hard-pressed debates, particularly in the Civil Rights era of the 1960s and 1970s. In fact, many scholars have deemed it to be a monumental paradigm shift in the study of discrimination and oppression. This perspective is due the shift in viewing disability as centered in the individual body to centered on the way society interacts with and responds to people with disabilities.

To better illustrate this paradigm shift, I will explain a co-existing but older model of disability—the medical model. Disability scholar Liz Crow has described the medical model, in juxtaposition to the social model, as viewing that, “a person’s functional limitations (impairments) are the root cause of any disadvantages experienced and these disadvantages can therefore only be rectified by treatment or cure.” The medical model of disability has shifted over time, following general medical trends, including that of eugenics (mentioned in the previous section) where people with disabilities were exterminated or experimented on. It is a form of the pathology model of social discrimination which intersects with and has been used against other groups as well, including racial and class minorities. This model has expanded to today’s practices which are slowly incorporating perspectives from the social model. The medical model has been strongly critiqued for having a patriarchal and disparaging view of disabled people, focusing on individual impairment and how it may be “fixed” or rendered less visible, “always be[ing] seen as largely a matter of a particular set of physical or intellectual dysfunctions and little else.”

One can imagine how the medical model, which, again, centers the “root cause of any disadvantages experienced” within the body of individuals, would make people feel alienated, undervalued, demoralized, and abnormal unless they find a “cure.” (Think of Magneto’s motivations in X-Men.) In reality, medical treatment and advancements are necessary facts of life for everybody, so putting the onus on the disabled person’s body is flawed and can be very damaging to their personal sense of agency and to everyone’s preconceptions of disabled people.

The medical model has long been used as a justification for charities, as explained in the previous history section, which further institutionalized the locus of control over disabled people’s lives. The charity model crippled disabled people by not allowing them to have personal agency and not giving them adequate supports to live fulfilled and self-directed lives. These paternalistic attitudes are still highly prevalent today, including, for example, many people who have to fight for their right to legal capacity—an issue explored further in Part III.

It is critical to note that the social model has been developed by disability activists themselves. As such, it is a much more empowering model than the medical or charity model. Nevertheless, any theoretical framework must be rigorously tested, so the social model has not gone without its critiques. The primary critique posits that the social model ignores or inadequately deals with the realities of impairment. While it is easy to lose sight of our daily struggles in the midst of theoretical debate, this critique is based on a conceptual misunderstanding as it recenters the debate on the individual body, not on the collective social structures, which is what the social model is designed to conceptualize.

Another critique of the social model of disability is that it does not incorporate other social divisions and forms of oppression, such as race, age, gender, etc. The “social model” as a phrase may be most commonly employed in connection with disability studies, but it by no means is limited to it. Furthermore, it is always important to remind ourselves of the intersectional nature of discrimination. Intersectionality as a concept emerged in the 1980s from the black feminist scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, not long after and in parallel with the social model of disability. Both intersectionality and the social model of disability are heuristic devices that work in concert with each other in attempting to conceptualize discrimination.

The concept of ‘intersectionality’ has been defined as “intersectional oppression [that] arises out of the combination of various oppressions which, together, produce something unique and distinct from any one form of discrimination standing alone….” An intersectional approach takes into account the historical, social and political context and recognizes the unique experience of the individual based on the intersection of all relevant grounds. This approach allows the particular experience of discrimination, based on the confluence of grounds involved, to be acknowledged and remedied.

My biggest personal critique of these conceptual models is that they have primarily originated from American and British (largely, though not solely, white male) academic settings which tend to be paternalistic towards the rest of the world. Particularly considering the fact (mentioned in the introduction) that roughly 80 percent of disabled people live in developing regions, many of whom have to fight for their survival on a daily basis, focusing on abstractions can seem insincere and aloof. Determining the jargon that can be applied to other people’s realities risks further imperializing and capitalizing on physical, intellectual, and cultural terrain that people have long tried to decolonize. At the same time, I believe that the strongest potential for improvement on every level—from personal to institutional to cultural—is to continue discussing the appropriateness of terms and elaborating and analyzing the associated rhetoric. Not everyone has the privilege of being able to have these in-depth discussions, so for those of us who do retain that privilege, it is incumbent on us to analyze our realities to the fullest extent possible. Being able to put a feeling or experience into words can be highly empowering and unifying—a culturally elevating and reifying experience.

My deeper critique (with a frank recognition that it is our strongest conceptual model yet) of the social model is that, in its simplest terms to be sure, it places society and the individual at odds, effectively sterilizing the relational fluidity between and within them. In conceptualizing different models which are centered more on the individual (medical/pathological and human rights) versus the culture (social and charity), in my mind lays out something like a grid where people are each a separate dot, and where we could see “society” if we zoom out and look at the patterns the dots form. But these dots never simply are, never merely existing. They are constantly changing in incomprehensible and immeasurable ways from every single bump into another dot—even being near each other. This changing nature centered in our relationships—however brief and seemingly nonexistent on a social level they may seem—is fundamentally intertwined with our bodies. This fact has never been so apparent to us as it has been during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic where we have experienced sudden and enduring isolation during lockdowns. Simply not being around other human beings takes a toll on our psyche. People with disabilities through many forms of social isolation have had to endure this form of estrangement, sadly on more deliberate and antagonistic terms. Perhaps with this form of massive social exposure to the experience of isolation, some may become more empathetic to those whom it has been forced upon.

Another model of disability which is typically used in legal and policy spheres but also overlaps with the social model is the human rights model. “It recognizes that disability is a natural part of human diversity that must be respected and supported in all its forms, people with disability have the same rights as everyone else in society, and impairment must not be used as an excuse to deny or restrict people’s rights.” This model is set out in the United Nations implemented the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD or CRPD), examined further in the next section. It defines disability as resulting from an interaction between “long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments” and the barriers that hinder “full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others.” It differs from the social model in that places the emphasis on peoples’ rights and how they are impacted or upheld within the laws of each ratifying nation.

The human rights model and general protections for those with disabilities were not established overnight, particularly not on an international scale. Rather, they have been painstakingly developed over the decades, illustrated in more detail below.

Socio-Legal Developments

In the United States, disabled people were not protected by legislation until Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 was passed and more so with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990, which expanded protections against discrimination beyond federal assistance programs to certain employment and accommodations situations.

These efforts were aimed at every level of society and for every aspect of life. The Rehabilitation Act was passed in 1973, the first law in U.S. history that protected the civil rights of people with disabilities. It provided for equal opportunity employment in the federal government, prohibited discrimination on the basis of mental or physical disability, and mandated equal access to public services. The 1964 Civil Rights Act is one of the most socially monumental pieces of legislation in history. People with disabilities fought for decades to have a similar law because this one did not provide for protection over them; it prohibited discrimination only on the bases of race, religion, national origin, and gender. Finally, in 1990, the ADA was passed. It mandated equal treatment in employment, public services, transportation, and telecommunication services. While these sectors by no means covered all of society, they have formed strong steppingstones to more robust protections.

The disability rights movement was also strong in Canada in the 1970s. Federal information gathering about the obstacles that disabled Canadians face was first documented in 1981 with the tabling in Parliament of Obstacles. The data in this report was the foundation for the 1998 In Unison report, which provided the vision and framework for advancing Canadian disability social inclusion. This momentum led to the critically important inclusion of “physical and mental disability” in section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982. Section 10 of the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms of 1976 also includes the condition of “a handicap or the use of any means to palliate a handicap” as a prohibited ground of discrimination. Human rights legislation, such as the Canadian Human Rights Act, 1985, subsequently included anti-discrimination provisions for disabilities, providing legal recourse for violations in private spheres as well as public, including federal and provincial, spheres. Now, there are many pieces of legislation aimed at combatting discrimination based on disability. These include the Employment Equity Act and the Policy on the Duty to Accommodate Persons with Disabilities in the Federal Public Service.

Andrews v. Law Society of British Columbia (1989) is the seminal SCC case on discrimination, dramatically advancing a notion of substantive, beyond formal, equality—a requirement unanimously affirmed in the later Eldridge v. British Columbia (AG) (1997) case. In Andrews, the Supreme Court clarified that the protection of equality rights in section 15 of the Charter is intended to “[promote] a society in which all are secure in the knowledge that they are recognized at law as human beings equally deserving of concern, respect and consideration.”

The promotion of substantive, as opposed to merely formal, equality in this judgment is a progression from the formerly relied upon “similarly situated test,” as put forth by Joseph Tussman and Jacobus tenBroekin “Equal Protection of the Laws” in 1949. This test calls for nuance in the application of the law, resorting not to a simple uniform application but to “reasonable classification” of citizens—effectively, treating likes alike. This approach, simplified here, has been critiqued for perpetuating discriminatory practices but was, in fact, a legal leap forward in the fight for equality.

tenBroek, a Canadian-born turned American lawyer, himself was blind, and he directly contributed to the Civil Rights movement with this proposition, particularly for other blind individuals. His piece “The Right to Live in the World: The Disabled in the Law of Torts” effectively created the disability rights movement for the blind in the U.S. and Canada and strongly contributed to the arguments used in the seminal case of Brown v. Board of Education. The equal protection analysis catalyzed all subsequent anti-discrimination work in these countries and helped manifest tenBroek’s deepest belief—that everyone has a right to live in the world. This idea advanced by Tussman and tenBroek forms the basis of Canadian section 15 Charterlitigation, including up to the most recent Supreme Court decision on the provision, Fraser v. Canada (AG), written by now-retired Justice Rosalie Abella to clarify the court’s stance on adverse effect discrimination.

The section 15 ground of disability was first clarified in the case of Eaton v Brant County Board of Education (1997). This case involved a young girl with cerebral palsy whose educational experience was upended with the ultimate decision held in favour of the school board. Here, the SCC exhibited a disability rights approach to its discrimination analysis, concluding that “it is recognition of the actual characteristics [of disability] and reasonable accommodation of these characteristics which is the central purpose of s. 15 in relation to disability.” The Court cautioned against taking a stereotypical view of disability, noting that it is the failure to make reasonable accommodation, “to fine-tune society so that its structures and assumptions do not result in the relegation and banishment of disabled persons from participation, which results in discrimination against them.” The Court acknowledged that disability is unique among the prohibited grounds of discrimination because it means vastly different things depending on the individual and the context.

Similarly, the Moore v. British Columbia (Education) (2012), which was argued on the basis of section 8 of the B.C. Human Rights Code, was an important advancement for Canadians with disabilities wherein the SCC ruled that “adequate special education…is not a dispensable luxury.”

The seminal constitutional and judicial review case Baker v. Canada (1999) is one of the most well-known Canadian cases involving disability, though that element is typically a minor detail in legal analyses. In the facts of this case, Baker’s application for permanent residency was denied without reasons. Upon judicial review, the officer’s notes demonstrated clear bias based in part on her diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. Although this case has made waves in improving the acceptance of applications via humanitarian and compassionate grounds, many people are still denied access because of the perception that they are a drain on society. Immigration policy has tended to focus on the economic benefit a potential immigrant can provide to Canada—a thin veneer of discrimination and an explicitly capitalistic valuation of human life. Leading Canadian disability law expert, Ravi Malhotra, illustrates the manifestation of this discriminatory immigration policy in a case dealing with an “adult child” who was not given the consideration of the ”best interests of the child” test and whose application for entry into Canada to rejoin her mother on “humanitarian and compassionate grounds” was denied. Canadian immigration laws have since been amended to loosen the “medical inadmissibility” provisions, but they have not been eliminated.

The disability rights movement made international waves when the United Nations implemented the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD or CRPD) in 2006 and which entered into force in 2008. Canada signed the CRPD in 2007 and ratified it in 2010. The U.S. signed it in 2009 but has not ratified it—a glaring human rights oversight. This UN convention was the first of the 21^st century. Its general principles are set out in Article 3:

1. 1. 1. 1. Respect for inherent dignity, individual autonomy including the freedom to make one’s own choices, and independence of persons;
         2. Non-discrimination;
         3. Full and effective participation and inclusion in society;
         4. Respect for difference and acceptance of persons with disabilities as part of human diversity and humanity;
         5. Equality of opportunity;
         6. Accessibility;
         7. Equality between men and women;
         8. Respect for the evolving capacities of children with disabilities and respect for the right of children with disabilities to preserve their identities.

Certainly, all of the provisions in the CRPD are important, but I would like to highlight a select few. Article 5 ensures legal protection of equality and against discrimination. Article 10 protects the right to life. As a final mention, Article 12 upholds equal protection before the law and legal capacity—a right too often infringed. As an important aside, explored in more detail by other scholars, the concept of legal capacity may sound familiar for those who have heard about #FreeBritney and the broader problem of predatory conservatorships and guardianships—legal constructions of supervision and dependency. It is an issue that has been gaining more public attention lately with the court-ordered termination of Britney Spears’s guardianship and the recent movie I Care A Lot about an avaricious court-appointed guardian who drains the estates of elderly individuals. While this movie may dramatize the issue, its existence and popularity highlight the pervasiveness of the problems of exploitative guardianships and impaired legal capacity for disabled and elderly people.

The UNCRPD has been one of the most popular and quickly-implemented international accords in recent history with extensive domestic adoption. However, it faces many differing criticisms about its effectiveness and real-world impact (or lack thereof). Even though Canada has ratified the CRPD, it has not incorporated it into domestic law due to its dualist approach to international treaties. “Nevertheless,” says Ravi Malhotra, “some aspects of the CRPD likely constitute customary international law and are therefore automatically Canadian domestic law unless contradictory legislation has been enacted.” Some legislation may implicitly incorporate the principles contained therein, and courts may refer to it in their judgments, particularly ones concerning the Charter and other pieces of human rights legislation. Suspicion about its actual efficacy is therefore warranted.

The crystallization into all levels of law, up to the highest international levels, of protections for people with disabilities has solidified hard-fought promises, but it must always be reshaped, differentiated, and developed to fulfill those promises to as many people as possible as our understandings change and, hopefully, as more peoples’ perspectives are brought to the fore.

PART III

Inclusive Design

Our understandings can change, even on international scales, as demonstrated above, but these changes have to first happen on smaller cultural and personal scales. How do we make policies, laws, and everyday features of life more inclusive for people with disabilities? We can start by examining how they have been shaped and what presumptions were in place for constructive decision-making. Increased awareness of these presumptions and the processes by which they are established can then create more conscientious space for learning about other ways of knowing, other “selfways,” or other “lifeworlds.” This expanded and diversified collective knowledge can lead to continuous improvements in global design schema.

These steps for more inclusive design are intentionally vague because they have infinite potential and application to many different areas, but I will maintain the focus on the laws affecting people with disabilities and other marginalized peoples. Terms such as “inclusive,” “universal,” and “accessible” design have become increasingly popular and are used almost interchangeably, but there are distinctions we can draw.

Accessibility is a general goal, as is universal design—a term coined in the 1980s by architect Ronald Mace, himself wheelchair bound since childhood as a result of polio. “Universal design is the design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design.” The UNCRPD defines it in Article 2 as “the design of products, environments, programmes, and services to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design. ‘Universal design’ shall not exclude assistive devices for particular groups of persons with disabilities where this is needed.”

Inclusive design, however, is the (perhaps more achievable) process of getting us closer to the ultimate goal of universal design. It “considers the full range of human diversity with respect to ability, language, culture, gender, age and other forms of human difference.” As one web accessibility designer describes, “Inclusive design is the practice of going up the mountain — we can always look for ways to include more people and situations to our designs, even if the result only gets us a few steps up the trail at a time. Universal design, by contrast, implies that reaching the summit is the true goal.”

Our Western legal systems are based on an illusory goal/premise of impartiality, “a cornerstone of Western political thought.” Particularly when it comes to anti-discrimination legislation and litigation, as described above, we strive for some sense of universal objectivism which can simultaneously encompass universal differences. This ambition seems contradictory and has, unfortunately, resulted in many (tacitly) legal forms of hierarchy and marginalization.

One scholar analyzes how impartiality has equated to rationality in Western thought since the Enlightenment, as opposed to emotion and entails a direct exclusion of emotion (or “affect,” i.e., feelings and emotions and our ability to feel them in our bodies). She argues that traditional discourse views that emotion is a necessary aspect of human life, despite its contrived separation from rationality, so it must be placed in some aspect of social life and is therefore attributed to women and people of color (as well as the disabled and LGBTQ+ communities) and treated as a private, not public issue. This division makes it impossible to evaluate different situations and actors in moral contexts. The view that the foundational legal concepts of impartiality and universality are flawed distillates leaves us with the challenge of either conceptualizing law without them or finding new concepts which embrace diversity, rather than suppress or sideline it.

Can such a fractal notion of universality capture the same value? I and others argue yes—perhaps with even greater impact. Jennifer Nedelsky broaches this question and asserts that “we need to find the modern equivalent of the soul,” something with equal moral worth to impartiality that has the capacity to recognize difference and not let it be an impediment to just outcomes. To accomplish this, we must dig deep into what embodiment of diversity really means.

Nedelsky refers to neurologist Antonio Damásio who argues that emotions are not separate from reasoning, as traditionally believed, but are, in fact, necessary for reasoning. His theory is that effective reasoning requires “somatic markers,” which are emotional responses that we have primarily gained through life experience and learn to apply to other situations. Even without realizing it, we make decisions based on the immediate gut feeling we get about a situation. Therefore, the classical distinction between reason and emotion is false. Nedelsky advanced this notion by asserting that our embodied selves determine our social outcome in large part, both because of our affectivity and because of the affectivity of others—in other words, physical traces of our own emotions and those of others in our bodies.

Anthropologist Kathryn Geurts examines this theory through a cross-cultural lens. She analyzes how every individual’s collection of senses (or as she calls it, a “sensorium,” similar to Mauss’s and Bourdieu’s “habitus”) is developed according to their particular culture and what that culture’s understandings are, as well as what can and should be perceived and how. Essentially, our cultures shape and are shaped by the way we perceive, interpret, and understand stimuli, which simultaneously shape our minds and bodies. According to Bourdieu, the habitus is “history turned into nature” or “durably installed generative principle of regulated improvisations.” In Geurt’s words, “culture affects not only inference and not only perception but also the seemingly basic domain of sensation through the organization and elaboration of categories through which immediate sensations are perceived. In this reading, culture does not only affect the mind. It changes the body.”

This process of cultural embodiment is achieved in a twofold process: “first, a sensory order is embodied, and this is one reason members of a cultural group find it precious, dear, and downright ‘natural’; second, a sensory order also contains cultural categories that are considered so dear (i.e., they are deemed so valuable by members of a cultural group) that they literally make these themes or these motifs into ‘body.’ To put it another way, human beings are ushered into (or ‘durably installed’ with) their culture’s sensorium, which reflects some of the most fundamental and dear values and categories that have been reproduced in this cultural community over time… They are some of the most ‘ineffable, incommunicable, and inimitable’ aspects of being.”

This process described by Guerts as our cultural sensorium being embodied and reformed into our bodies, our fundamental ways of existing in the natural world, our ““history turned into nature.” Our bodies of law are also reflective of this process. They, too, are made up of our deepest cultural values and fears. They, too, can be changed to embody greater inclusion.

One artist-scholar, Arseli Dokumaci, studies the way that disabled people manipulate their surroundings to suit their needs and describes it as “vital affordances.” These affordances are manifested as adaptations to the environment and its shortcomings. Dokumaci demonstrates in scholarship and visual ethnographies that “disabled individuals might transform the very materiality of the environment through the most mundane and micro of their performances.” She argues, “for a disability politics that does not omit; on the contrary, takes its political force from the singularities of impairment, as it is these singularities that bring otherwise unimaginable action possibilities to life.” Because disabled people are too often marginalized from larger cultures, they develop micro cultures, as is apparent in many deaf communities, for example. These subcultures are not isolated, however, and impact everyone in ways that can be unexpectedly beneficial.

The term “curb cut effect” exemplifies these affordances. In the midst of the Civil Rights movement, described in Part I, a group of activists wheeled themselves onto a street corner in the night to form their own ramp onto the sidewalk. This undoubtedly arduous yet seemingly small task was the first step in eliminating mobility barriers for countless people, wheelchair users or not. The phrase is now commonly used to refer to structures designed by and for disabled people which end up benefiting all.

Designing our lives and surroundings for maximal inclusion results in compounded collective gain. It helps societies better adapt to changing conditions, whether they are social, political, environmental, or any combination of them. We can ultimately achieve this continuous process of improvement most effectively by employing and celebrating the forms of expertise and lived realities of people with disabilities.

Conclusion

When asked, “Is it still possible to speak about the body in any universal sense?” writer Olivia Laingresponded, “I think so because I think the fundamental of our bodies is that we’re born into them, and we die inside them. There’s so much nuance inside identity, there’s so much nuance inside different groups of bodies and different identities of bodies, but there is something really raw and core about our bodily lives that actually we don’t often talk about, which is the sense that they’re mortal, that they are vulnerable to harm, and different types of bodies are more vulnerable to different types of harms, and some bodies are very sequestered and very safe, but that is the fundamental… There’s some sense to me that to think of us all as bodies—it’s humbling. It’s a way of understanding us as an imperiled species, especially in this moment of climate change. We need to think for ‘we’ because we need to make changes to our world.”

It can be difficult understanding that our perspectives are products of our culture because we cannot inherently know anyone else’s nor truly objectively analyze our own. It can also be difficult viewing the patterns that each our dots make in my imaginary grid, described in Part II. But, by continuing a process of growth and learning about other perspectives and, critically, for letting people who have different perspectives be the designers, creators, and decision-makers, we can create new somatic markers within our bodies, among our relationships, and in our cultures. We can shift the dots and the spaces between them.

When it comes to our laws, this process requires existing lawmakers to heed marginalized voices and give them space to be heard by more people. We should conduct transparent public and private inquiries about the ways disabled, racialized, and (non)gendered people are being hindered and, from their perspectives, how to shift them from hindrances to advantages. It requires putting disabled people and others in positions where they can utilize their, our expertise and lived experiences. By doing so, we can incrementally alleviate disabling barriers (physical and conceptual) and facilitate everyone’s lives. We can design anything—toys, buildings, cities, laws, policies, climate justice—to be better, more accessible, more inclusive and enabling for infinite embodied differences. This is what it means to crip the commons.