Welfare Reform on the Web (January 2009): Services for the disabled - UK

Disability Rights Commission: from civil rights to social rights

A. Fletcher and N. O'Brien

Journal of Law and Society, vol.35, 2008, p. 520-550

This paper argues that, although originally conceived as part of the civil rights agenda, the development of disability rights in Britain by the Disability Rights Commission is better seen as a movement towards the realization of social, economic and cultural rights in the round. As such the process of development represents a concrete exercise in the implementation of social rights by a statutory equality body and a significant step towards the conception of disability rights as universal participation, not just individual or minority group entitlement.