Glossary

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Reflexive Ethnography

Reflexive ethnography is an approach to ethnographic research in which the researcher explicitly documents and analyses how their own identity, assumptions, relationships and shifting position in the field shape the knowledge produced. Rather than presenting findings as neutral…

Rehabilitation Engineering(also: Rehab Engineering)

An engineering discipline focused on quantifying, measuring, and modeling human performance to provide better-fitting assistive technology adaptations. Rehabilitation engineering emerged partly as a response to trial-and-error approaches in assistive technology, bringing…

Representative Users(also: Target Users, Intended Users)

Study participants who share the relevant characteristics of the population for whom a technology or solution is being designed. In accessibility research, this means including people with the actual disabilities being addressed rather than substitutes like blindfolded sighted…

Researcher Bias(also: Investigator Bias)

The influence of a researcher's own perspectives, assumptions, and identity on how they design studies, ask questions, and interpret data. In accessibility research, researcher bias can manifest when non-disabled researchers position themselves as saviors, frame questions based…

Residual Category(also: Residual Categories)

A concept from Susan Leigh Star describing the "other" or "not applicable" categories in classification systems — the bucket where anything that does not fit predefined types gets placed. Individuals sorted into residual categories become illegible to the systems that grant…

Resistant Reading(also: Reading Against the Grain, Resistant Reader)

A critical reading method, originally articulated by feminist literary theorist Judith Fetterley, that refuses the interpretive framework an author invites the reader to adopt and instead reads texts for what they silence, marginalise, or explain away. In HCI and accessibility…

Response Bias(also: Survey Bias, Respondent Bias)

A systematic tendency for survey respondents to answer questions in a way that does not accurately reflect their true opinions or experiences. In accessibility research, response bias is particularly important to consider because participants with disabilities may provide more…

Routine Infrastructuring

A concept developed by Bryan Semaan describing community practices through which marginalised and oppressed groups continually reconfigure sociotechnical arrangements to sustain everyday life under persistent disruption. Unlike classical infrastructuring, which treats disruption…

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