Capability Approach to Disability

The medical model locates disability in the body and the strong social model locates it in disabling social arrangements. The capability approach locates disability in the gap between what a person can actually do and be and what they could do and be, produced by the interaction of impairment, resources, and conversion factors. Impairment enters as one personal conversion factor whose disabling effect depends on social and environmental context. This interactional account, Mitra argues, can incorporate insights from both prior models while grounding disability in real opportunity freedom.

Potential disability is a restriction in a person's capability set — opportunities that are foreclosed to them. Actual disability is a deprivation in their achieved functionings — doings and beings they fail to realize. The two can diverge: with support or compensation, a person whose capabilities are restricted may still achieve typical functionings, and a person with ample capabilities may achieve fewer functionings by choice. Keeping the levels distinct prevents conflating reduced opportunity with reduced achievement, which matters for both diagnosis and policy.

Partly. Functionings — achieved states like being employed, mobile, or included — are observable and are commonly used as proxies. Capabilities, the underlying opportunity sets, are not directly observable, so they must be inferred from resources, conversion factors, and the choices people make. Mitra stresses this limitation: functioning-based measures capture realized states rather than the freedom behind them, so good operationalization measures functionings across multiple domains alongside the environmental and social factors that shape capability, while acknowledging that the deeper construct is only approximated.