The role of Environment in the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF)

The ICF is a classification that allows a comprehensive and detailed description of a person's experience of disability, including the environmental barriers and facilitators that have an impact on a person's functioning. The recognition of the central role played by environmental factors has changed the locus of the problem and, hence, focus of intervention, from the individual to the environment in which the individual lives. Disability is no longer understood as a feature of the individual, but rather as the outcome of an interaction of the person with a health condition and the environmental factors.