Glossary
Searchable terminology from accessibility, web standards, and related fields.
148 results found in disability studies.
- Enforced Trust (Compelled Trust)
- A dynamic in which blind people are required to trust technologies, sighted individuals, and systems without having independent means to verify the information or outputs provided to them. Enforced tr…
- Enhanced Activities of Daily Living (EADLs, EADL (gerontology), Advanced Activities of Daily Living)
- In gerontology and human-robot interaction research, the highest tier of everyday activities — higher-order social, recreational, and civic pursuits that enable full participation in society, such as …
- Epistemic Contingency
- A concept from disability studies scholar Rod Michalko describing the start of acquiring a visual disability as an ongoing negotiation of ways of knowing. Blind epistemology — ways of knowing as a bli…
- Epistemic Injustice (Knowledge Injustice)
- A form of injustice that occurs when someone is wronged in their capacity as a knower — either by having their testimony dismissed or undervalued (testimonial injustice) or by lacking the conceptual r…
- Failure Point Barrier (Failure Point)
- A type of access barrier where a task is completely impossible without assistive technology or support. Failure point barriers represent the most severe form of inaccessibility—without the necessary t…
- Forced Intimacy
- Forced Intimacy is a concept coined by disability and transformative justice activist Mia Mingus that describes the experience of disabled people being expected to share very personal information with…
- Future Impact Barrier
- A type of access barrier where a task can be completed in the present without difficulty, but doing so will cause negative consequences in the future, such as triggering a migraine, causing cumulative…
- Global South (Developing World, Majority World)
- A term referring broadly to countries in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and Oceania that have been historically marginalized in global economic and political systems. In accessibility research, the Glob…
- Hostile Design (Hostile architecture, Deterrent design)
- A design orientation in which systems — physical, digital, or bureaucratic — are intentionally configured to deter use, discourage certain populations, or reduce uptake, rather than to enable access. …
- Hypervigilance
- A state of heightened alertness and sensitivity to potential threats in one's environment, commonly associated with PTSD, anxiety disorders, and trauma. Hypervigilant individuals may constantly scan f…
- Identity Model of Disability (Affirmation Model)
- A model of disability in which individuals claim disability as a positive aspect of their identity, similar to how other marginalized groups have reclaimed their identities. Unlike the medical model (…
- Inequitable Access (Inadequate Accommodation)
- Inequitable access describes the situation where accommodations or accessibility measures are provided but fail to adequately address the underlying inaccessibility, leaving people with disabilities w…
- Inspiration Porn
- The portrayal of people with disabilities as inspirational solely or primarily because of their disability, objectifying them for the benefit of non-disabled audiences. Coined by disability activist S…
- Interdependent Accessibility (Interdependence Framework, Access Interdependence)
- A framework for understanding accessibility as a collective, co-created responsibility rather than an individual accommodation. Interdependent accessibility recognizes that access is produced through …
- Internalized stigma (Self-stigma, Internalized ableism)
- The process by which individuals with disabilities or neurodivergent conditions absorb and internalize negative societal attitudes about their condition, leading to shame, reduced self-worth, and relu…
- Intersectionality (Intersectional analysis)
- A theoretical framework originated by Kimberlé Crenshaw recognizing that individuals hold multiple social identities (disability, race, gender, class, sexuality) that interact to produce unique experi…
- Intra-sectionality (Intra-sectional Analysis)
- The examination of variation and diversity within a single identity category or demographic group, as opposed to intersectionality which examines the interaction between different identity categories.…
- Invisible Work (Invisible Labour, Hidden Work)
- The unrecognized and often uncompensated effort that people with disabilities must perform to navigate inaccessible environments, technologies, and workplaces. In professional settings, invisible work…
- Invisible labor (Access labor, Hidden work)
- The additional, often unrecognized effort that people with disabilities must invest to create and maintain access in environments not designed for them. In workplace contexts, invisible labor includes…
- LLM Disability Bias (AI Ableism, Language Model Disability Bias)
- Systematic prejudice against people with disabilities embedded in large language models due to biased training data and development processes that underrepresent disabled communities. Research has doc…