The language of 'impairment' and 'disability' borrows from the social model of disability. While people have impairments, the environment - attitudinal as well as physical - can be disabling. It is simplistic to attribute problems about disability to individuals who are said to 'have' this or that disability when the reality is that many such problems disappear when environments are accessible. And although there is little that staff in higher education can do to change the facts of students' impairments, there may be scope for altering the environment of higher education, which, like any environment, may be disabling.
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