By: Fabio Bertoni

The blind live in a world built by and for the sighted (Butler, 1994: 368)

Ruth Butler, in a brief yet immensely important contribution, emphasizes the significance of the spatial dimension in critically rethinking sensory disabilities, particularly visual impairment. The debate emerging in the UK during the 90s is a product of decade-long struggles by disabled individuals and social movements against social inequalities, ableist violence and discrimination, as well as medical, social work, and institutional violences. Additionally, it challenges the capitalist and laborist rationality in defining the so-called ‘able body.’

From this political and cultural ferment, the ‘social model of disability‘ emerges, representing a substantial reversal in the conceptualization of disability. It no longer views disability solely as an individual biological, medical, or genetic condition as in the medical model, but rather as a social condition where impairment or difference leads to stigma and inequality. This turn also affects spatial reasoning: social geography and urban studies transition from being tools for epidemiological studies to becoming critical investigations of how spatiality socially constructs disability and defines ableist norms.

This blog post serves as the initial inspiration for a research project focusing on the construction of a social norm of visual perception and visibility within urban environments, starting from the daily experiences of individuals with visual impairments. The aim is to investigate how this aspect intersects with other social inequalities, such as class, race, gender, and generation, within the urban fabric. The research will employ an ethnographic approach in the cities of Lisbon and Milan.

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