Affirmative Consent

A consent model that requires explicit, active agreement to an action - typically framed as 'yes means yes' rather than the absence of refusal. Originating in sexual-violence prevention and adopted in HCI work on consent technology, affirmative consent emphasises that silence, ambiguity, or prior consent are not agreement. The model has been criticised as unrealistic in practice, under-adopted, and verbal-default - offering little guidance for non-verbal communication or for people, including many neurodivergent users, for whom primarily-verbal consent is inaccessible.