Important & Recurrent Language

Abelism: The systemic discrimination and prejudice against disabled people. Abelism stems from placing value directly on people’s bodies and minds through constructed ideas of normalcy, perceived intelligence, excellence, and productivity. These ideas did not appear out of nowhere and are rooted in anti-Blackness, eugenics, colonialism, capitalism, and racism. Abelism describes that the lives of disabled people are less worth living, expendable, and have inherently less value. Societies constructed on ableism see the eradication of disability as a sign of a utopia. 

Accessibility: This term refers to the design of products, devices, services or environments in how they are able to be used. The level of accessibility is dependent on who can access products, devices, services or environments and who can not. 

Abled Bodied: This term is used to refer to someone who is living with no illness, injury, or condition that disables them. Non-disabled is a synonym. 

D/deaf: This term is used as a collective noun to describe both those who identify as “Deaf” and Deaf culture and those who identify with deaf. The term Deaf with an uppercase D refers to those who are medically deaf or hard of hearing and identify/participate in culture, society, and language of Dead people based around Sign Language. deaf with a lower case d is a medical/audiological term referring to those who have little to no functioning hearing. 

Crip: Slang for the word “cripple”. The term cripple originated in describing someone with a physical disability, even being used as a slur. Many disabled people reclaim this slur, and use crip as a way of describing their community, experiences, politics. Crip Theory is an academic subfield popularised by Robert McRuer and Carrie Sandahal that merges queer theory and critical disability studies to look at their intersection.

Invisible Disability: This term describes disabilities that are not immediately apparent to a casual observer. This can include: cognitive disabilities, mental illnesses, chronic pain conditions, and much more. 

Mad: Mad is a reclaimed word borrowed from the Mad Liberation and Psychiatric Survivors movement in the 1960s to 1970s, it should only be used with permission from individuals and communities. Mad Studies is a field of study that overlaps with critical disability studies on how experiences labeled as mental illness are determined by social norms. Richard Ingram is credited with coining the term in 2007 as a research fellow.

Neurodivergence: Neurodivergence is a term coined by activist Kassianne Sibley that looks at how some brains are pathologized and discriminated against. Autistic communities and other communities with cognitive and learning disabilities have used the term to describe their experience of being marginalized. Neurotypical describes those who are without these cognitive, learning, and mental health disabilities.