Introduction

This article explores disability from a new perspective through the sociological theories of Professor Pierre Bourdieu. Its primary objective is to demonstrate that the very concept of disability, as it is currently understood and employed, is intrinsically imbued with discriminatory assumptions. For this reason, the expression disabled persons (persone disabilizzate) is used to emphasise that disability is not an intrinsic characteristic of an individual's body, mind, eyesight or any other physical or cognitive trait that differs from what society considers the norm. Rather, disability is a social condition imposed upon individuals by society itself, which, through its structures and practices, ultimately disables them.

Bourdieu's Habitus

Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002) was among the first sociologists to demonstrate that society and its structures become inscribed within the biological body of the individual. More specifically, he sought to dismantle the prevailing assumption that society consisted of an objective dimension represented by social structures, accompanied by a second supposedly objective dimension imposed equally upon everyone, alongside a subjective dimension according to which individuals were considered entirely free agents.

Bourdieu introduced the concept of habitus, understood as a system of durable and transferable dispositions that continuously shapes and influences the way individuals perceive the world around them. Habitus may be compared to a lens through which every person observes reality from birth onwards. It should neither be regarded as an immutable form of thought nor as the product of complete individual freedom. Rather, it constitutes a structured system of values, beliefs and dispositions. Habitus is simultaneously structured and structuring. It is structured because it derives from an individual's previous living conditions, including social class, family background, educational experiences and cultural environment. At the same time, it is structuring because it shapes future practices, perceptions and behaviours, continuously influencing how individuals interpret reality and interact with the social world.

The Disabled Habitus: The Body as Memory

Bourdieu argues that habitus should be understood as embodied history. Applying this theory to persons with disabilities immediately reveals a fundamental contradiction.The paradox lies in the fact that contemporary society, together with its environments and physical spaces, is designed and structured around the needs of a supposedly standard individual, despite the existence of people with a wide variety of physical, sensory and cognitive characteristics.

As a result, limitations become automatically incorporated into the everyday lives of persons with disabilities, since they are constantly required to compensate for environments that were never designed with them in mind. This process gives rise to a distinctive disabled habitus, characterised by continuous strategies of adaptation, risk assessment, and the management of other people's expectations, gazes and judgements. Even an individual's perception of their own body is profoundly shaped by this condition. While a person without disabilities can often experience their body almost unconsciously, taking it for granted in everyday life, a person with disabilities is instead compelled to remain in a constant state of awareness and reflection. Because they must continuously negotiate and adapt to a social structure built around normative bodies, their own body can never become transparent or unnoticed. Instead, it becomes something that constantly demands attention, planning and care. This produces what may be described as a broken or reflexive habitus, in which bodily awareness is never suspended but remains an ongoing feature of everyday experience.

Within Bourdieu's theoretical framework, the body itself constitutes a form of capital. In a society that rewards productivity, efficiency and dominant aesthetic standards, the able body acquires symbolic value and consequently becomes the body most readily recognised and rewarded by the prevailing social order. Conversely, individuals with disabilities—whether physical, sensory or cognitive—are frequently perceived as possessing less capital. This perception extends well beyond the body itself and often translates into assumptions regarding competence, credibility and social worth. As a consequence, people with disabilities may be regarded as less capable within many of the principal spheres of social life, including education, employment and even family relationships. The outcome is a form of symbolic violence. Persons with disabilities frequently internalise feelings of inadequacy generated not by their impairment itself but by a social structure built around normative bodies and standardised expectations. Over time, many begin to believe that they are not sufficiently capable, competent or deserving, developing a profound sense of powerlessness that stems from the continuous need to adapt to environments that were never designed for them.

Bourdieu's theory also highlights the significance of the physical environments in which individuals spend their lives. For persons with disabilities, spending substantial periods within hospitals, rehabilitation centres or specialised institutions may profoundly shape their perception of themselves. The passive role traditionally assigned to patients, the expectation of unquestioning compliance with medical authority and the tendency to perceive oneself primarily as an object of care may all become deeply internalised. Consequently, individuals may begin not only to perceive themselves but also to act as though they were permanently dependent upon others, passive recipients of assistance rather than active agents capable of directing their own lives. Contemporary disability studies seek precisely to dismantle this socially constructed framework. Their objective is to promote the development of active social actors rather than passive subjects, while critically examining all those social environments whose structures continue to create barriers for persons with disabilities.

Among the environments that, unfortunately, still tend to reinforce a passive understanding of disability are schools, cultural institutions and workplaces. Because many teachers' professional habitus remains based upon one or more standardised models of teaching and learning, students with disabilities are often relegated—sometimes subtly, sometimes explicitly—to the status of second-class learners. In some cases, they are offered educational opportunities that are considered less demanding, less relevant or of lower quality than those provided to their peers without disabilities. The workplace represents another environment in which the operation of the disabled habitus becomes particularly evident. A person with disabilities may decide not to apply for a particular position, not because they lack the necessary qualifications or professional competence, but because they have internalised the belief that they are somehow undeserving of such a role. They may feel insufficiently prepared, incapable of representing the position adequately, or simply convinced that they do not belong within that professional environment. In doing so, they unconsciously impose limitations upon themselves, reproducing the very social boundaries that have already been imposed by society. The concept of limitation, together with socially constructed expectations regarding what roles persons with disabilities are presumed capable of occupying, becomes progressively internalised until it forms part of their own habitus.

New Technologies: From Passive Aids to Active Partners

Whereas, in the past, assistive devices for persons with disabilities were essentially reactive—for example, wheelchairs propelled solely by the user's arm strength, or Braille as the only means through which blind people could access written information—today we have entered the era of Assistive Technologies (AT). As scholars such as Helsper and Robinson have argued, if habitus functions as the lens through which individuals perceive and experience a social structure that is both structured and structuring, it follows that habitus itself evolves alongside society and its technological transformations. The rapid development of digital technologies has consequently given rise to what is now referred to as the Digital Habitus, a phenomenon that has represented—and continues to represent—a turning point in the lives of persons with disabilities by progressively dismantling physical barriers, reducing social stigma and fostering greater independence. 

The impact of contemporary assistive technologies may be understood through three complementary Bourdieusian perspectives. The first concerns the relationship between technology and embodied practice. An assistive technology can truly be regarded as successful when the assistance it provides becomes virtually invisible. Consider, for example, a blind person who is now able to read text messages, emails, books and official documents entirely independently using a smartphone or computer equipped with a screen reader. What was once perceived as a technical obstacle—the inability to access written information autonomously—gradually becomes an ordinary everyday practice. The technological intervention ceases to be experienced as extraordinary and instead becomes fully incorporated into daily routines. As a consequence, what Bourdieu would describe as reflexive effort is significantly reduced. The individual no longer needs to devote constant cognitive attention to overcoming a barrier; instead, the activity becomes naturalised. In this way, assistive technology contributes to transforming the disabled habitus itself, bringing it progressively closer to the embodied experience of individuals without disabilities.

Historically, however, assistive technologies were not always regarded as valuable investments capable of promoting social participation. During the 1980s, such technologies were generally expensive, cumbersome and accessible only to a limited number of individuals. At that time, the dominant habitus continued to be centred upon the image of the patient, while persons with disabilities were primarily viewed as recipients of specialised services rather than autonomous social actors. The emergence of a genuine Digital Habitus can largely be traced to the period between 2010 and 2020, when smartphones became widespread and integrated accessibility features—particularly screen readers—became standard components of mainstream devices. For the first time, tools such as automatic subtitles, speech recognition systems, image descriptions and audio descriptions for films became part of everyday digital life, benefiting not only persons with disabilities but society as a whole. Accessibility therefore ceased to be understood as an exceptional accommodation reserved for a minority and gradually became integrated into mainstream technological design. This transition has contributed significantly to dismantling one of the first barriers separating persons with disabilities from the wider community. Today, the increasing use of artificial intelligence and inclusive technological policies should no longer be interpreted as acts of generosity or optional concessions offered to those perceived as disadvantaged. Rather, they should be recognised as fundamental standards of a modern, inclusive and democratic society. Technology no longer merely compensates for individual impairments. Instead, it actively reshapes social participation itself by reducing structural barriers and enabling individuals with disabilities to exercise greater autonomy across education, employment, communication and everyday life. From this perspective, assistive technologies should not be understood simply as external instruments. They become integrated into the individual's habitus, transforming the relationship between body, environment and society, and redefining what autonomy itself can mean in the digital age.

The Merit of Normality and Privilege

According to Bourdieu, individuals without disabilities are largely unaware of the privilege they enjoy by living in a world designed in their own image and likeness—a world that has been conceived, tested and made accessible precisely because it reflects the dominant habitus. Their relationship with disability is often characterised by detachment, not out of deliberate indifference, but because they have never been required to question the assumptions underlying their own everyday experiences. When confronted for the first time with the disabled habitus, their own habitus may function as a distorting lens that clashes with the socially constructed image of the "normal" body. As a result, this initial encounter may give rise to feelings of pity or, perhaps even more frequently, emotional distance and discomfort. This perception, however, is neither inevitable nor irreversible. It can be transformed through gradual and meaningful exposure to the lived experiences of persons with disabilities. According to Bourdieu, such exposure should begin within the family through open and informed dialogue, continue within schools and educational settings, and extend to cultural institutions capable of presenting disability in a realistic and inclusive manner. Bringing these two worlds closer together allows individuals without disabilities to recognise that the disabled habitus is not characterised by passive adaptation to society. On the contrary, it is founded upon highly developed capacities for problem-solving, adaptability, resilience and self-management. Once individuals without disabilities become fully aware of their own privileges and genuinely understand the continuous effort of compensation that many persons with disabilities undertake every single day, a profound social transformation becomes possible. If those who belong to the dominant habitus become conscious of the standards that a truly inclusive society should pursue—not only for persons with disabilities but for society as a whole—they themselves can become active allies in the normalisation of disability. Consequently, they will begin to demand that every individual be guaranteed equal opportunities and conditions of dignity. They will also expect their colleagues, classmates, employers, educators, family members and wider communities to uphold these same principles. Communities in which such forms of habitus have become widely shared and socially expected are precisely those in which exclusion itself comes to be regarded as abnormal. Within these communities, the absence of accessibility and inclusion is no longer perceived as unfortunate but acceptable. Rather, it is recognised as a structural failure—a distortion of what has become the new social norm. This emerging reality is one in which compensatory measures have become universally accessible, seamlessly integrated into everyday life and largely invisible. As a consequence, persons with and without disabilities are finally placed on genuinely equal footing, recognising one another as individuals of equal dignity and equal social value.

Conclusion

This article seeks to leave readers with a fundamental awareness: the expression "person with a disability" itself may unintentionally perpetuate a discriminatory understanding of disability because it overlooks the responsibility of the surrounding social structure in producing exclusion. For this reason, it may be more appropriate to speak of disabled persons (persone disabilizzate), since this terminology not only personalises the experience of disability but also acknowledges the active role played by society in creating disabling conditions. Adopting this perspective also means accepting collective responsibility for building a society that is genuinely accessible to everyone. Such a society should not rely upon rigid standards accompanied by occasional exceptions. Rather, it should recognise that human diversity is itself the norm. What have traditionally been labelled as "exceptions" should instead be understood as an integral part of the social fabric. Only by embracing this understanding can accessibility cease to be viewed as a special concession and instead become an essential characteristic of a democratic, inclusive and equitable society. Ultimately, Bourdieu's theory encourages us to rethink disability not as an individual deficit but as the outcome of a relationship between bodies and social structures. Changing this relationship requires more than technological innovation or legal reform. It demands a transformation of the collective habitus itself—a cultural shift through which inclusion becomes so deeply embedded in everyday life that it is no longer perceived as an accommodation, but simply as the ordinary way in which society functions.

References

Bourdieu, P. (1979). La Distinction. Critique sociale du jugement. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit. (Italian edition: La distinzione. Critica sociale del gusto, Il Mulino).

Bourdieu, P. (1980). Le Sens pratique. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit. (Italian edition: Il senso pratico, Armando Editore).

Bourdieu, P. (1972). Esquisse d'une théorie de la pratique. Geneva: Droz.

Wacquant, L. (2014). Homines in Extremis: What It Means to Be a Body in the Boxing Gym.

Bourdieu, P. (1983). La distinzione. Critica sociale del gusto. Bologna: Il Mulino. (Particularly the chapter Habitus and the Space of Lifestyles).

Ignatow, G., & Robinson, L. (2017).

Helsper, E. J. (2021). The Digital Disconnect.

Haider, J., & Sundin, O. (2022). Invisible Search and Online Search Engines.

Edwards, G. (2005). Bourdieu, Social Capital and Online Interaction for People with Disabilities.

Galvin, R. (2002). The Social Exclusion of Disabled People: The Utility of the Work of Pierre Bourdieu. In Disability & Society.