Glossary
Terms used in accessibility research and practice. Each entry has a definition, common aliases, and category tags.
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- Ableism(also: Disability discrimination, Disablism)
- Discrimination, prejudice, or social bias against people with disabilities, rooted in the assumption that typical abilities are superior and that disabled people need to be fixed or are inherently less capable. Ableism operates at multiple levels: structural (inaccessible…
- Access labour(also: Access labor, Disability labour, Accommodation labour)
- The additional physical, cognitive, and emotional work that disabled people must perform to navigate inaccessible environments, systems, and social situations. This includes researching whether venues are accessible, requesting and negotiating accommodations, educating…
- Adaptable system
- A system that can be configured using prior knowledge before use, as opposed to an adaptive system which changes dynamically during use. In accessibility, adaptable systems allow users or administrators to set preferences in advance — for example, selecting a high contrast…
- Assent(also: Informed assent, Child assent)
- A participant's affirmative agreement to take part in research, used when the individual cannot legally provide informed consent — most commonly children or people with certain cognitive disabilities. Unlike informed consent, assent does not carry the same legal weight but…
- Audism
- Systemic discrimination and prejudice against deaf and hard of hearing people, rooted in the belief that hearing and spoken language are inherently superior to deafness and sign language. Coined by Tom Humphries in 1975, audism operates at individual, institutional, and societal…
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