If late-twentieth-century disability studies was associated with establishing the factors that led to the structural, economic and cultural exclusion of people with sensory, physical and cognitive impairments, then disability studies in the current century might be seen as a time of developing nuanced theoretical responses to these factors.The politicization of disabled people is at the heart of these developments.Disability activisms have brought about a host of national and pan-national responses, including the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.The potency of Disabled People's International is testimony to the growing interconnectedness of the politics of disability across the globe.On the ground, disability studies have entered a host of training and educational contexts, social policies, legislative discourses and professional practices.Furthermore, disability studies have dallied with many theoretical ideas.Contemporary disability studies occupy and agitate for what Carol Thomas defines in her book Sociologies of Disability and Illness as a transdisciplinary space breaking boundaries between disciplines, deconstructing professional/ lay distinctions and decolonizing traditional medicalized views of disability with socio-cultural conceptions of disablism.Thomas defines disablism as "a form of social oppression involving the social imposition of restrictions of activity on people with impairments and the socially engendered undermining of their psycho-emotional well being" (Sociologies 73).This definition sits alongside other forms of oppression including hetero/sexism and racism.Indeed, as explained below, the intersectional character of disability is one of a number of reasons why we might conceptualize the contemporary state of the field as critical disability studies.
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