Disability and COVID-19: improving legal and policy responses through grassroots disability ethics

Abstract

The emergency legal and policy responses to COVID-19 attempt to avoid discrimination against disabled people. But they do not address deeper ableist and disableist narratives and practices embedded in emergency health policy. Adopting a disability ethics approach to the guidelines that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic shows that they rest on dubious ethical grounds. However, emergency legal and policy responses to COVID-19 can be improved by adopting an approach based on disability ethics principles that emerge from grassroots level.