Glossary
Searchable terminology from accessibility, web standards, and related fields.
148 results found in disability studies.
- Passing (Passing as non-disabled, Neurotypical passing)
- The act of concealing one's disability or neurodivergence to be perceived as non-disabled or neurotypical by others. Passing can be a deliberate strategy to avoid stigma, discrimination, or unwanted a…
- Person-First Language (People-First Language, PFL)
- Person-first language is a linguistic convention that places the person before the disability or condition, such as "person with a disability" or "person with autism," with the intent of emphasizing p…
- Pleasure Activism
- A framework articulated by adrienne maree brown that centers pleasure, joy, and satisfaction as essential components of social justice and liberation movements. In disability contexts, pleasure activi…
- Political/Relational Model of Disability (Relational Model of Disability)
- A model of disability described by Alison Kafer that situates disability within sociopolitical systems, emphasizing how structures of power and interactions between people construct the experience of …
- Positionality (Researcher Positionality)
- The practice of researchers explicitly acknowledging how their own identities, experiences, backgrounds, and power positions shape their research process, analysis, and interpretations. In disability …
- Post-Modern Model of Disability (Postmodern Model, Critical Disability Model)
- A framework for understanding disability that integrates aspects of both the medical and social models, recognizing that both physiological factors and social barriers contribute to the experience of …
- Psychosocial Disability (Psychosocial Impairment)
- A disability that stems from diverse mental, cognitive, or emotional experiences that lead to impairment and experienced barriers in social participation. Psychosocial disabilities include conditions …
- Qualitative Data Analysis (QDA, Qualitative Analysis)
- A research methodology for systematically examining non-numerical data such as interview transcripts, field notes, audio recordings, images, and videos to identify patterns, themes, and meanings. The …
- Queer-crip (Queer-crip theory, Queer crip)
- A theoretical lens combining queer theory and crip theory to examine how queerness and disability co-produce experiences of marginalisation, care, and resistance. Queer-crip perspectives critique comp…
- Relational Accessibility (Relational Access)
- An approach to accessibility that treats access as something co-constructed between people in everyday life, rather than a property of an individual user, tool, or environment. Relational accessibilit…
- Representational harm (Representational bias)
- A category of harm caused by AI systems that perpetuate or amplify negative stereotypes, demeaning portrayals, or erasure of particular social groups, distinct from allocative harms that deny resource…
- Research Fatigue (Participant Fatigue, Community Research Fatigue)
- The exhaustion or disengagement experienced by individuals or communities that are repeatedly recruited for research studies, particularly when they see little benefit or change resulting from their p…
- Self-Accommodation (Self-Accommodations)
- Strategies and adaptations that individuals develop independently to manage disability-related challenges, without formal support systems or clinical intervention. Self-accommodations are particularly…
- Sighted Bias (Visual Bias, Ocularcentrism)
- The tendency in technology design to privilege sighted ways of perceiving and understanding the world, often unconsciously centering visual sensibilities in interfaces, descriptions, and assessment cr…
- Sighted-Centric Design (Vision-Centric Design)
- Design approaches and practices that privilege sighted sensemaking and marginalize blind and non-visual ways of relating to the world. Sighted-centered design produces technologies, interfaces, and de…
- Situated Knowledge (Situated Knowledges)
- A concept from feminist epistemology, developed by Donna Haraway, holding that all knowledge is produced from particular social, bodily, and historical positions rather than from a neutral, objective …
- Social Accessibility
- A design paradigm introduced by Shinohara and colleagues emphasizing that assistive technologies must be designed for the social worlds they will be used within, not just for functional task completio…
- Social Model of Disability (social model, barriers model)
- A framework that distinguishes between impairment (a physical, sensory, or cognitive difference) and disability (the social barriers and exclusion that result from society not accommodating that diffe…
- Social Model of Disability
- A framework originating in disability studies and activism that views disability not as an inherent deficit in an individual but as the result of social, environmental, and political barriers that exc…
- Socially Recursive Inference (Social Recursion)
- The cognitive process by which individuals' perceptions and behaviors are shaped by what they believe others think about them or their situation. In accessibility contexts, socially recursive inferenc…