Glossary
Searchable terminology from accessibility, web standards, and related fields.
26 results found in critical theory.
- Access as Friction
- A disability-studies framing, articulated by Jackson, Haagaard, and Williams, that reframes accessibility work as productive friction rather than seamless accommodation. Rather than smoothing every in…
- Agential Realism
- A theoretical framework developed by physicist-philosopher Karen Barad that rejects the idea of pre-existing, independent subjects and objects, arguing instead that phenomena emerge through specific "…
- Biomedicalization of Aging (Medicalization of Aging)
- The tendency, identified by critical gerontologists, to reduce the complexity of later life to problems of physical and cognitive decline requiring medical or technological intervention. Biomedicaliza…
- Compulsory Able-Bodiedness (Compulsory Ableness)
- A concept from disability studies scholar Robert McRuer describing the pervasive social assumption that all people should aspire to and perform able-bodiedness as the default, desirable state. Like co…
- Crip Epistemology (Cripistemology)
- A framework for understanding how disability produces distinct forms of knowledge that challenge dominant, ableist ways of knowing. Rooted in crip theory and disability studies, crip epistemologies re…
- Crip Technoscience (Critical Disability Technoscience)
- A framework articulated by Aimi Hamraie and Kelly Fritsch that examines how disabled people engage with, repurpose, and create technologies from their own embodied knowledge and political standpoints.…
- Crip Theory (Crip Studies, Critical Disability Theory)
- A theoretical framework that reclaims the word "crip" (from "cripple") as a positive identity and analytical lens for challenging normative assumptions about bodies, ability, and disability. Rooted in…
- Critical Disability Theory (Critical Disability Studies, CDT)
- An interdisciplinary theoretical framework that examines disability as a social, political, and cultural phenomenon rather than solely a medical condition. Critical disability theory draws on disabili…
- Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)
- An interdisciplinary research methodology that examines how language and texts both reflect and shape power structures, ideologies, and social practices. Originating from the work of Michel Foucault, …
- Critical Gerontology
- An interdisciplinary approach to the study of aging that critiques the dominant biomedical framing of later life and foregrounds structural, political, and cultural influences on older people's experi…
- Critical Race Theory (CRT)
- Critical Race Theory is a scholarly framework originating in legal studies that examines how laws, policies, and institutions perpetuate racial inequality, even in the absence of overt individual raci…
- Designing with Friction (Friction by Design)
- An HCI design stance, associated with Matthias Korn and Amy Voida, that argues for deliberately introducing friction into interactive systems to surface politics, provoke reflection, and enable democr…
- DisCrit (Disability Critical Race Studies, Dis/ability Critical Race Studies)
- DisCrit (Disability Critical Race Studies) is a theoretical framework that merges Disability Studies with Critical Race Theory to analyze how racism and ableism are interdependent systems that work to…
- Disability Aesthetics
- A discourse related to reclaiming the visibility of disability in mainstream art, particularly visual and performance arts, through the depiction of disabled bodies as both beautiful and inspiring. Un…
- Disability Justice (DJ)
- A framework developed by disabled queer and trans people of color — including Patty Berne, Mia Mingus, Stacey Milbern, Eli Clare, and Leroy Moore through Sins Invalid — that recognizes disability as i…
- Feminist HCI
- An approach to human-computer interaction research and design articulated by Shaowen Bardzell that brings feminist theory, values, and methods into HCI practice. Feminist HCI foregrounds pluralism, em…
- Infrastructural Inversion
- A methodological move, articulated by Geoffrey Bowker and Susan Leigh Star, that foregrounds the usually invisible infrastructure underpinning everyday action — categories, standards, procedures, sile…
- Logocentrism
- In captioning studies, the systematic prioritization of speech and spoken language over non-speech sounds in captioning practices and technologies. Logocentrism in captioning manifests as speech capti…
- Neuroqueer Technoscience
- A theoretical framework, developed by Nick Walker and extended in HCI by Barros Pena, Williams and others, that builds on crip technoscience and the neuroqueer paradigm to position neurodivergent peop…
- Non-Use (Technology Non-Use, Technology Refusal)
- A research tradition in HCI that takes seriously the choice not to use a technology — treating refusal, abandonment, and selective engagement as meaningful, reasoned behaviour rather than as failure. …