“Many homes, public buildings and everyday spaces continue to be unsuitable and unwelcoming to people with non-normal bodies” (Andrews et al. 2012, 1928). With reference to either disability or body size, critically review the different approaches taken by health geographers to the relationship between place, bodily differences and inequalities. Michael Oliver suggests that people are not disabled or non-disabled categorically, but everyone belongs somewhere on a continuum of ability (1990). However he argues the emergence of conventional attitudes towards disability as a subsequence of the industrial revolution of the 19th century in Britain, as people with impairments were unable to fulfil their ‘duty’ to work in mainstream factories. This led to the marginalisation and segregation of disabled people, to areas away from the ‘economically productive’ society which had little public transport, poor education systems and few places of both work and leisure (Gleeson, 1999). This essay will explore how these attitudes have been maintained in modern society, specifically through the frameworks of the social and medical models of disability in regards to public spaces and building design. Disability ceases to be something somebody inherently has, and becomes more of something that is done to a person by somebody else (Oliver, 1998). To be disabled is to encounter experiences of exclusion, and to be faced with social, physical and environmental barriers. This follows the social model of disability which was developed by the Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation, whereby there is a distinguishable difference between disablement and impairment (UPIAS, 1976: 14). Disablement is a social construction and is the act of ostracism which perpetuates social oppression and institutional discrimination, such like that of gender, sexuality and race (Barnes, 1991). Disablement represents the absence of choice in the lives of the disabled, for example not being able to choose which church they want to attend due to the inability to access the building (Hooks, 1984). Whereas impairment is defined as a long-term symptom which limits an individual’s physical, mental or sensory functions (Stuart O, 2009). This approach provides an alternative understanding of the realities and experiences a disabled person faces, and it offers a platform to disassociate the physical issues of their impairment, with the issues caused from their social exclusion, and draws attention to the barriers society creates. The medical model of disability provides a conceptual approach within which disability can be understood and measured. The central focus of this sociopolitical framework is that the disability of a person is their own individual personal tragedy, and “it is the responsibility of the minority to cope by overcoming their handicaps and/or compensating for them” (Imrie, 1996:12). According to the medical model, impairment denotes disarray and indiscipline and as such, it is perceived as something to be cured, overcome or hidden. Within the medical model framework the surrounding environment and culture in which a disabled person is situated, is regarded as unrelated and unproblematic (Davis, 1995). In context to public spaces, the medical model suggests that it is not the fault of the building design if a wheelchair cannot gain access, it is the fault of the individual. The medical model reflects wider cultural assumptions around identity and personal independence, where in modern western society a great value is placed upon self-presentation, where a ‘normal’ body is created through the need to be independent and in control of oneself (Keith, 1994). As an approach to disability, this model creates unequal power relations between those with able-bodies and those with disabled bodies, as it labels disabled people as ‘non-normal’ and therefore inferior. Following the work of Rob Imrie (1996) society uses space in an explicit way to create geographies of segregation for disabled