Throughout the world, the societies have created different frameworks to explain disability. Some of these explanations are based in religion or morality while others are rooted in the science. While in some societies, people with disability are considered gifts of the gods or bearers of extra ordinary powers, in most societies, disabilities create difference, exclusion and poverty. Many of these frameworks treat disability as a physical/mental impairment. They focus in on the problems with the individuals, on the disability and medical rehabilitation solution to fix these problems. Often linked with these approaches is the use of charity, which emphasizes the helplessness of persons with disability and their need for paternalistic care. These approaches continue to influence service development for people disability. Telethons that raise money by exploiting the pitiful image of people with disabilities and play upon out-dated concepts of the deserving poor are characterized by the charity approach. The medical approach can be seen in defining disabled people by their specific disability. It can also be seen in the promotion of huge institutions all over the world that segregate people with disability from the society.

A more effective approach, often called the social or independent living model of disability emphasizes that disability is located at the interface between the individual and physical, social and political environment could be modified to be more accommodating and inclusive for the people with disabilities.

Indeed universal design, one of the solution arising from the social model, promotes the development of a built environment that is usable by wide range of people with deserve abilities. This approach is both empowering and liberating for people with disabilities with the focus shifting from the individual to the interface between the environment and the individual, disability becomes a social/political problem rather then a personal problems.

The social model provides a unique and important contribution to addressing disability across the world. The old approaches have not resulted in the successful economic integration of people with disability but have systematically undervalued a potentially contributing part of society. The social model suggests realistic interventions for the achievement of the inclusion of people with disability in the mainstream of global society. One of its strategies for addressing inclusion is the concepts of universal design. The universal design is the design of the products and environment to be useable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design.

The social model provides a framework of disability analysis that has sufficient scope to encompass "Individual initiatives in different countries, with different cultural and political structures to be directed at achieving human rights, social and economic inclusion at citizens and democratization for people with disability.