Cultural Appropriation

The adoption or use of elements from a minority culture by members of a dominant culture without proper understanding, acknowledgment, or respect for their original meaning and significance. In disability and accessibility contexts, this can occur when hearing researchers or developers create sign language technologies without meaningful deaf community involvement, or when non-disabled people profit from disability-related innovations while excluding disabled people from development decisions. The concept highlights power imbalances in who controls cultural representations and who benefits from them.