Misfit

A concept from disability-studies scholar Rosemarie Garland-Thomson describing 'an incongruent relationship between two things' - the material mismatch between a body and an environment not built for it. Rather than locating disability in the individual, the misfit frames disability as relational and situational: it emerges in the juxtaposition of body and world. The concept is widely used in accessibility research to reframe inaccessible digital and physical environments as design problems rather than deficits of the disabled user.