Read the notes, then try the practice. It adapts as you go.When you're ready.
Session Length
~17 min
Adaptive Checks
15 questions
Transfer Probes
8
Disability studies is an interdisciplinary academic field that examines disability as a social, cultural, and political phenomenon rather than a purely medical condition. Drawing on insights from sociology, history, philosophy, law, literature, and the arts, the field challenges the assumption that disability is an individual deficit requiring cure or rehabilitation. Instead, disability studies scholars argue that much of what we call 'disability' is produced by social barriers, discriminatory attitudes, and inaccessible environments that exclude people with physical, sensory, cognitive, and psychiatric differences from full participation in society.
The field emerged from the disability rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom, where activists rejected institutionalization and demanded civil rights, independent living, and self-determination. Key legislative milestones such as the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2006 both reflected and advanced the intellectual frameworks developed within disability studies. The social model of disability, articulated by British scholars such as Michael Oliver, became a foundational concept, distinguishing between impairment (a bodily condition) and disability (the social exclusion produced by barriers).
Today, disability studies engages with intersectional analyses that explore how disability intersects with race, gender, sexuality, class, and age. Crip theory, inspired by queer theory, reclaims disability as a site of identity, culture, and political resistance. Scholars in the field also critically examine topics such as eugenics, prenatal testing, institutionalization, accessible design, disability representation in media, and the politics of care and dependence. The field continues to expand globally, incorporating perspectives from the Global South and challenging Western-centric frameworks of disability and inclusion.
One step at a time.
A framework that distinguishes between impairment (a bodily or mental condition) and disability (the social barriers and exclusion that people with impairments face). Disability is understood as produced by society rather than by the individual's body.
Example: A wheelchair user is not disabled by their inability to walk but by the absence of ramps, elevators, and accessible public transit that prevent them from participating in social life.
The traditional framework that views disability as an individual pathology or deficit located in the body, requiring medical intervention, cure, or rehabilitation to restore the person to 'normal' functioning.
Example: A doctor diagnosing a child with cerebral palsy and focusing exclusively on physical therapy to approximate typical movement, without considering environmental accommodations or the child's own preferences.
A system of discrimination and social prejudice that favors able-bodied and neurotypical individuals, devaluing the lives, contributions, and experiences of disabled people. It operates at individual, institutional, and structural levels.
Example: An employer assuming that a blind applicant cannot perform a job without ever exploring assistive technologies or reasonable accommodations that would make the position fully accessible.
An intellectual and political framework, influenced by queer theory, that reclaims the word 'crip' to challenge normative assumptions about bodies and minds. It questions compulsory able-bodiedness and celebrates disability as a form of human diversity and identity.
Example: Disability activists and scholars using 'cripping' as a verb to describe the practice of analyzing cultural texts, spaces, or policies from a disability perspective that destabilizes assumed norms.
The design of products, environments, programs, and services to be usable by all people to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design. It benefits not only disabled people but the entire population.
Example: Curb cuts were originally designed for wheelchair users but are now used by parents with strollers, delivery workers with carts, travelers with luggage, and cyclists, demonstrating the 'curb cut effect.'
The analysis of how disability intersects with other axes of identity and oppression, including race, gender, class, sexuality, and nationality. Disabled people's experiences vary dramatically depending on these intersecting social positions.
Example: A Black Deaf woman navigating healthcare may face compounded barriers from racism, audism, and sexism simultaneously, resulting in experiences not fully captured by analyzing any single axis of oppression alone.
A social and political movement, originating in the 1960s and 1970s, that asserts the right of disabled people to live in the community with adequate support rather than in institutions. It emphasizes consumer control, self-determination, and peer support.
Example: The founding of the first Center for Independent Living in Berkeley, California in 1972 by Ed Roberts and other disability activists, which became a model for hundreds of similar centers worldwide.
A framework developed by disabled queer people of color, including Sins Invalid and Patty Berne, that centers the leadership of those most impacted by intersecting systems of oppression. It moves beyond legal rights to address collective liberation and interdependence.
Example: Disability justice organizers building mutual aid networks during natural disasters that prioritize the needs of disabled people of color, recognizing that emergency response systems frequently fail marginalized communities.
More terms are available in the glossary.
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