Ableism

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 environments and policies), cultural (stereotypes and negative attitudes), and internalised (when disabled people themselves absorb deficit-based views of disability). In accessibility practice, ableism often manifests as designing for a narrow range of abilities, framing disability as a problem to be solved rather than a form of human diversity, and placing the burden of adaptation on disabled users rather than on the systems and environments they interact with.