Glossary
Searchable terminology from accessibility, web standards, and related fields.
148 results found in disability studies.
- AI disability representation (AI disability simulation, Disability representation in AI)
- The portrayal or simulation of disabled experiences, communication styles, or perspectives by artificial intelligence systems. AI disability representation raises significant ethical concerns: while A…
- Ability Assumptions (Ability-Based Assumptions, Normative Assumptions)
- Ability assumptions are the implicit expectations that technology designers build into systems about users' physical, sensory, and cognitive capabilities. These assumptions — about how fast someone mo…
- Ability requirement (Ability demand, Interaction prerequisite)
- A capability that a person must possess in order to use a technology system, created implicitly by the system's design. AI systems generate new ability requirements: voice assistants require recogniza…
- Ableist microaggression (Disability microaggression, Casual ableism)
- A subtle, often unintentional comment, question, or behavior that communicates hostile, derogatory, or negative assumptions about disability. Examples include unsolicited compliments on "bravery" for …
- Academic Ableism
- Systemic discrimination against disabled people within academic institutions and research practices. In higher education, academic ableism manifests through inaccessible learning environments, expecta…
- Access Barrier (Accessibility Barrier, Barrier to Access)
- Any obstacle that prevents or diminishes a disabled person's ability to complete a task, participate in an activity, or access information. Access barriers are not limited to complete inability (failu…
- Access Differential (Accessibility Gap, Access Gap)
- Access differential is the gap between the access that nondisabled people experience and the access that people with disabilities experience when using the same technologies, services, or environments…
- Access Work (Access Labour)
- The often invisible labor that disabled people and their allies perform to negotiate, secure, and maintain access to spaces, services, and activities. Access work includes tasks such as researching ac…
- 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…
- Aesthetic Blindness
- Aesthetic blindness is a myth and misconception rooted in ableism that assumes blind people cannot perceive, appreciate, or create beauty because beauty is rendered solely through visual means. This a…
- Agency (User Agency, Sense of Agency)
- The capacity to act, make choices, and exert control over one's own life and environment. In disability studies, agency is distinguished from independence — a person can have agency (the ability to ma…
- Allistic (Non-Autistic)
- A term used to describe people who are not autistic, regardless of whether they are neurotypical in other respects. The term was created within autistic communities to provide a specific counterpart t…
- AuDHD (Autism and ADHD co-occurrence)
- A term used by the neurodivergent community to describe the co-occurrence of autism spectrum disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in the same individual. Research suggests significant…
- Autistic Sociality (Autistic Social Interaction, Atypical Sociality)
- The distinct ways in which autistic people form social connections, build community, and engage in relationships — which differ from neurotypical social norms but are not deficient. Autistic sociality…
- Blind Epistemology
- Ways of knowing and understanding the world as a blind person, which are fluid, relational, and shaped by touch, sound, memory, spatial familiarity, and social interaction rather than visual perceptio…
- Bodymind
- A concept from disability studies, introduced by Margaret Price and widely adopted by disability scholars and activists, referring to the inseparable integration of body and mind as a single entity. T…
- Bodymind Barrier (Bodymind Access Barrier)
- A type of access barrier where performing a task leads to an undesirable physical or mental state, such as pain, fatigue, nausea, dizziness, anxiety, or sensory overload. The task may be technically c…
- Boundary Objects (Boundary Object)
- A concept from Star and Griesemer (1989) describing artifacts that are structured enough to be understood by different social worlds but flexible enough to be interpreted differently by each one, allo…
- Capabilities approach (Capability approach, Human capabilities framework)
- A philosophical framework developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum that evaluates well-being and justice based on what people are actually able to do and be, rather than on the resources they poss…
- Celebratory technology
- Technology designed to highlight, affirm, and celebrate neurodivergent and disabled ways of being, rather than seeking to correct, normalize, or remediate them. Coined by LouAnne Boyd (2023), celebrat…