Glossary

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AI disability representation(also: 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 AI can make disability awareness training more scalable and interactive, it…

Ability Assumptions(also: 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 moves, their range of motion, body proportions, grip strength, speech patterns,…

Ability requirement(also: 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 recognizable speech production, autonomous vehicles require pedestrians to look and move…

Ableist Microaggressions Scale(also: AMS)

A validated measurement instrument developed by Conover, Israel, and Nylund-Gibson (2017) to systematically assess the frequency and impact of subtle, everyday expressions of ableism. The AMS organises disability microaggressions into four empirically supported domains —…

Ableist microaggression(also: 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 performing routine tasks, expressions of surprise at a disabled person's…

Academic Ableism

Systemic discrimination against disabled people within academic institutions and research practices. In higher education, academic ableism manifests through inaccessible learning environments, expectations of productivity that do not account for disability, and research…

Academic Accessibility(also: Accessibility in academia, Scholarly accessibility)

The degree to which the tools, publications, venues, and institutional practices of academic research and higher education are usable by disabled students, faculty, and researchers. Academic accessibility spans scholarly PDFs and figures, reference and qualitative-analysis…

Access Barrier(also: 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 (failure points) but also include situations where tasks can be completed but with…

Access Differential(also: 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. Unlike a binary view of accessibility (accessible or not), access…

Access Work(also: 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 accommodations, communicating needs, navigating institutional processes, and…

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 interaction, "access as friction" calls for designs that make users pause,…

Adaptive Behavior(also: Adaptive Skills, Adaptive Functioning)

The collection of conceptual, social, and practical skills that people learn and perform in everyday life. Conceptual skills include language, literacy, and self-direction; social skills encompass interpersonal abilities and social responsibility; practical skills involve…

Adventitious blindness(also: Acquired blindness, Late blindness, Acquired visual impairment)

Vision loss that occurs after a period of sighted experience, as opposed to congenital blindness (present from birth). People with adventitious blindness retain visual memories, mental imagery, and familiarity with visual concepts like color and spatial layout, which…

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 assumption has historically led to the exclusion of blind and low vision people…

Agency(also: 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 make decisions and direct actions) while still relying on others for support,…

Allistic(also: 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 to "autistic" that does not frame autism as deviation from a norm. Using…

Ask-Point(also: Help Request Point)

Ask-point is a term introduced in disability-and-HCI research to name a discrete moment in daily life at which a person with a disability must request help from a caregiver, family member, or other person — for example, reaching for a dropped object, opening a door, transferring…

AuDHD(also: 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 overlap between the two conditions, with estimates indicating that 50-70% of…

Autistic Sociality(also: 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 may emphasize shared interests over personal relationships, prefer text-based…

Aversive Disablism(also: Aversive Ableism, Subtle Disablism)

Aversive disablism is a concept from disability studies, developed by Mark Deal, describing a form of subtle, often unconscious prejudice toward disabled people. Aversive disablists recognize that discrimination is wrong and do not see themselves as prejudiced, yet they hold…

Biopsychosocial Model(also: BPS Model)

The biopsychosocial model is a holistic framework for understanding health and disability that considers the interplay of biological, psychological, and social factors in a person's experience. In contrast to the medical model (which focuses on biological deficits) and the…

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 perception. Blind epistemology recognizes that blind people develop rich, valid…

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. The term rejects the Cartesian dualism that separates physical and mental…

Bodymind Barrier(also: 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 completable without distress, but existing approaches cause the person's…

Boundary Objects(also: 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, allowing cooperation across communities without forced consensus. In accessibility…

Capabilities approach(also: 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 possess. In disability and accessibility contexts, the capabilities approach…

Care Partner(also: Care Dyad, Caregiving Relationship)

A term encompassing both the person providing care (caregiver) and the person receiving care (care receiver), emphasizing the collaborative and reciprocal nature of care relationships rather than a one-directional helper-recipient dynamic. The care partner framework recognizes…

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), celebratory technology contrasts with deficit-oriented assistive technology by…

Charity Model of Disability(also: Charity Model)

A framework that views people with disabilities as helpless victims who are dependent on the goodwill and benevolence of others. Under this model, disability is treated as a tragedy requiring charitable intervention, positioning disabled people as passive recipients of aid…

Chronic Illness(also: Chronic Condition, Long-Term Illness)

Health conditions that persist for an extended period, typically more than three months, and may require ongoing management but do not necessarily have a cure. Examples include diabetes, fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis, and chronic fatigue syndrome. People with chronic…

Civil Inattention

A social behavior theorized by sociologist Erving Goffman describing how strangers in public spaces acknowledge each other's presence through brief eye contact or a nod, then deliberately look away to respect personal boundaries. Civil inattention is a form of unfocused…

Cognitive Disability(also: Cognitive Impairment, Cognitive Disabilities)

A broad term encompassing conditions that affect cognitive processes such as memory, attention, perception, learning, language, and executive function. Cognitive disabilities include intellectual disabilities, traumatic brain injuries, neurodegenerative conditions, and…

Collaborative Access(also: Collective Access)

An approach to accessibility that frames access as a shared, negotiated process involving multiple stakeholders rather than an individual accommodation provided to a single person. Collaborative access recognizes that achieving inclusion often requires coordination between…

Communication Disability(also: Communication Impairment, Complex Communication Needs)

A condition that significantly limits a person's ability to communicate through speech, language, or other conventional means. Communication disabilities can result from neurological conditions (cerebral palsy, stroke, ALS, Parkinson's disease), developmental conditions,…

Community Sustainability(also: Research Sustainability)

The principle that research practices should not deplete, harm, or overburden the communities from which participants are recruited. In accessibility research, community sustainability requires considering the cumulative impact of multiple studies drawing from the same…

Compensatory Technology(also: Compensatory Approach)

Assistive technology designed primarily to offset or make up for a person's functional limitations, focusing on what the person cannot do rather than building on their existing abilities. While compensatory approaches have historically dominated AT design, there is a growing…

Complementary Cognition

A theory proposed by Taylor, Fernandes, and Wraight suggesting that the human species has adapted and evolved cognitively to complement each other through cognitive specializations and effective collaboration. Under this framework, different neurological profiles (including…

Compulsory Able-Bodiedness(also: 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 compulsory heterosexuality, compulsory able-bodiedness operates as an invisible…

Consequence Calculus

The decision-making process by which disabled individuals weigh all available options for addressing an access barrier and select the option that best matches their priorities given their contextual factors. Consequence calculus involves evaluating trade-offs across multiple…

Consequence-Based Accessibility

A framework introduced by Mack and McDonnell that describes how people with chronic illnesses experience access barriers where the consequences of their actions, rather than the nature of the task itself, make something inaccessible. For example, a person may be physically…

Contextual Factors

The characteristics of a person, their tools, or their environment that influence experiences of access or inaccessibility. Contextual factors include identity-related factors (race, gender, class, age, language, religion, sexuality, body size), social contexts (who one is…

Counternarratives(also: Counter-storytelling, Critical Counter-narrative)

A qualitative research and pedagogical technique, rooted in critical race theory and education research (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002), in which members of marginalized groups write and share their own stories to challenge dominant, “flat” narratives about their identities. In…

Creative Agency(also: Creative Autonomy, Creative Control)

The ability of an individual to make independent creative decisions, express personal aesthetic preferences, and maintain ownership over the creative process and its outcomes. For blind individuals, creative agency in visual media is often limited by inaccessible tools, reliance…

Crip Epistemology(also: 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 recognize that disabled bodyminds generate situated, embodied knowledge through…

Crip HCI

An orientation within human-computer interaction that brings crip theory and crip technoscience into the methods, design practices, and evaluation frameworks of computing research. Rather than asking how technology can accommodate disabled users within existing normative…

Crip Spacetime

A concept developed by disability-studies scholar Margaret Price to describe the material-discursive reality in which disabled people live according to temporalities and spatialities that remain invisible to privileged groups. Crip spacetime names the significant extra effort…

Crip Technoscience(also: 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. The Crip Technoscience Manifesto advocates for technology research and design…

Crip Theory(also: 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 disability studies and informed by queer theory, crip theory critiques…

Crip Theory(also: Crip, Crip Technoscience)

An academic and activist framework that reclaims "crip" as a positive identity term, challenging normative assumptions about disability, ability, and bodily difference. Emerging from queer theory and disability studies, crip theory questions compulsory able-bodiedness and…

Crip World-Making

Crip world-making, articulated by Robert McRuer and related disability theorists, describes the generative practices through which disabled people make hostile environments liveable - hacking, repurposing and reconfiguring tools, spaces and social norms to fit their bodyminds…