According to sociologist Len Barton (1996, p. 3), one charge of his field is to relate social structures to the ‘lived reality of people in particular social settings’. If ‘particular social settings’ includes a person's spatial setting, then the same charge is true for social geography. These relationships between social structures and lived realities are particularly meaningful in disability geography – one of the more recent streams of social and human geography. This chapter seeks to introduce the reader to this field, giving a brief glimpse of the evolution and development of disability studies in the larger realm of the social sciences, particularly in geography.

As with any other introductory work, it runs the risk of giving the subject superficial treatment by trying to present too much in too short a space. However, since disability geography still does not find adequate representation in mainstream social geography books or curricula, it would be appropriate to provide an overview of the field to the reader. While breadth is prioritized over depth, the latter is not eschewed altogether. Using a phenomenological approach, I have tried to highlight the prominent role of social environments in the creation of disability through a comparative examination of shifting meanings of disability across space. Thus, the two-fold aim of this chapter is to highlight disability and persons with disabilities as important components of society and social geography studies, and to underline the importance of social contexts in the creation of disability.