Disability Tools and Research Guide

The interdisciplinary nature of disability studies

• Disability Studies is interdisciplinary. This means that Disability studies relates to several different fields of study. 
• You will need to learn to distinguish between medical, scientific, historical, and sociological treatments of disability, and find sources that fit in with your research framework. This can take some experience.

Terminology may be offensive and inaccurate.

• Current articles and historical documents often use outdated terminology.
• Oftentimes, research materials can be cataloged using outdated terminology.
• Some of the outdated terminology can be offensive, inaccurate, and may be triggering to some people.
• While it is important to use respectful and current terminology in your own research and writing, you may need to use some of these terms as keywords to find historical documents.

Historical Lack of Cataloging

• Disability studies materials may have only recently been cataloged as such, complicating research.
• Historically, some subject headings and tags did not exist.

Finding keywords for disability studies can be challenging:

• Critical theory may use its own critical vocabulary and jargon
• Some terms related to disability may be used as metaphors in other contexts
• Older work may use dated terminology
• Older work may not have been cataloged as disability studies at all

Some keywords to try

• abledness, ableism, ableist, able-bodied, able-bodiedness
• access, accessible, accessibility
• ageism, ageist, aging
• Deaf, deafness, deaf studies (some Deaf people consider themselves to be a linguistic/cultural minority, not disabled)
• dis/ability, disability, disabilities, "disability studies", "disability rights", disabled
• disease, dis-ease
• enable, enabling
• inclusion, inclusiveness, inclusivity
• normalcy, normals, normative
• sick, sickness
• universal design

Rhetorical constructions in disability studies
If you're looking for specific readings or theorizations of a topic, try combining your keyword with frequently paired terms like:

• advocate, advocacy
• biology, biological, bioethics
• body, bodies
• critical
• difference
• "disability studies"
• discrimination
• "identity politics"
• medical, medicalization
• microaggression
• narrative, narratives
• politics, political
• representation, representations
• rhetoric, rhetorical, "visual rhetoric"
• signify, signifying
• visible, visibility, invisible, invisibility, visual