Glossary
Searchable terminology from accessibility, web standards, and related fields.
69 results found in Disability Studies.
- Ableist Microaggressions Scale (AMS)
- A validated measurement instrument developed by Conover, Israel, and Nylund-Gibson (2017) to systematically assess the frequency and impact of subtle, everyday expressions of ableism. The AMS organise…
- Academic Accessibility (Accessibility in academia, Scholarly accessibility)
- The degree to which the tools, publications, venues, and institutional practices of academic research and higher education are usable by disabled students, faculty, and researchers. Academic accessibi…
- Adaptive Behavior (Adaptive Skills, Adaptive Functioning)
- The collection of conceptual, social, and practical skills that people learn and perform in everyday life. Conceptual skills include language, literacy, and self-direction; social skills encompass int…
- Adventitious blindness (Acquired blindness, Late blindness, Acquired visual impairment)
- Vision loss that occurs after a period of sighted experience, as opposed to congenital blindness (present from birth). People with adventitious blindness retain visual memories, mental imagery, and fa…
- Ask-Point (Help Request Point)
- Ask-point is a term introduced in disability-and-HCI research to name a discrete moment in daily life at which a person with a disability must request help from a caregiver, family member, or other pe…
- Aversive Disablism (Aversive Ableism, Subtle Disablism)
- Aversive disablism is a concept from disability studies, developed by Mark Deal, describing a form of subtle, often unconscious prejudice toward disabled people. Aversive disablists recognize that dis…
- Biopsychosocial Model (BPS Model)
- The biopsychosocial model is a holistic framework for understanding health and disability that considers the interplay of biological, psychological, and social factors in a person's experience. In con…
- Care Partner (Care Dyad, Caregiving Relationship)
- A term encompassing both the person providing care (caregiver) and the person receiving care (care receiver), emphasizing the collaborative and reciprocal nature of care relationships rather than a on…
- Cognitive Disability (Cognitive Impairment, Cognitive Disabilities)
- A broad term encompassing conditions that affect cognitive processes such as memory, attention, perception, learning, language, and executive function. Cognitive disabilities include intellectual disa…
- Communication Disability (Communication Impairment, Complex Communication Needs)
- A condition that significantly limits a person's ability to communicate through speech, language, or other conventional means. Communication disabilities can result from neurological conditions (cereb…
- Complementary Cognition
- A theory proposed by Taylor, Fernandes, and Wraight suggesting that the human species has adapted and evolved cognitively to complement each other through cognitive specializations and effective colla…
- Counternarratives (Counter-storytelling, Critical Counter-narrative)
- A qualitative research and pedagogical technique, rooted in critical race theory and education research (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002), in which members of marginalized groups write and share their own sto…
- Crip HCI
- An orientation within human-computer interaction that brings crip theory and crip technoscience into the methods, design practices, and evaluation frameworks of computing research. Rather than asking …
- Crip World-Making
- Crip world-making, articulated by Robert McRuer and related disability theorists, describes the generative practices through which disabled people make hostile environments liveable - hacking, repurpo…
- Critical Realism (Transcendental Realism, Critical Naturalism)
- A philosophy of science developed by Roy Bhaskar that offers a middle position between positivism (reality is only what can be empirically observed) and radical constructivism (reality is entirely soc…
- Damage-centered Design (Damage-centered Research, Deficit-framed Design)
- An approach in HCI and design research that frames marginalized communities - including disabled people, BIPOC communities, and others - primarily through the lens of harms, deficits, and barriers to …
- Deaf Music (Deaf musicality, Music in Deaf culture)
- Music as experienced, created, and culturally interpreted by d/Deaf and Hard of Hearing individuals and communities. Deaf music encompasses a multimodal, spatio-temporal engagement with rhythm, vibrat…
- Disability Identity
- The ways in which individuals understand, relate to, and incorporate disability into their sense of self. Disability identity is shaped by personal experience, cultural context, community belonging, a…
- Disability Microaggression (Ableist Microaggression)
- A subtle, often unintentional verbal, non-verbal, or environmental slight, snub, or insult that communicates hostility, marginalization, or prejudice toward a person with a disability. Conover et al. …
- Disability Stigma (Stigma, Disability-Related Stigma)
- Negative attitudes, stereotypes, prejudice, and discriminatory behavior directed toward people with disabilities. Disability stigma can lead to social exclusion, reduced opportunities, and internalize…