Accessibility and Disability Studies

Accessibility and Disability Studies include a wide range of topics and opportunities for research. If you have an assignment in this field but are not sure where to begin, you may want to consider:

1. The criteria of your assignment. (How are you being graded? What must you include in your paper?)
2. The topic(s) you're already interested in. (What specific figures, movements, organizations, and/or events do you want to research?)
3. The who, what, where, when, why, and how questions regarding your topic. (Who is the focus? What are you trying to find out? What time period and region will you focus on? Why is this important? How did it impact future events?)
4. The materials you can find and access. (Is there recent scholarship on this topic? Are there first-hand accounts/primary sources I could use?)
5. The size and scope of your research. (Can I write a paper on this topic that will fit the criteria of my assignment?)

While conducting research in Accessibility and Disability Studies, keep in mind that: 

1. Accessibility and Disability studies are interdisciplinary. You will need to learn to distinguish medical, scientific, historical, and sociological treatments of disability – as well as the critical vocabulary and jargon different disciplines may use – to find sources that fit within your research framework.
2. Terminology may be offensive and inaccurate. Current and historical research may use outdated terminology, and resources may be cataloged using outdated and/or biased terminology that may be considered politically incorrect and hurtful. Although you may want to avoid outdated terminology in your own research, you might need to use them as search terms if you want to be comprehensive, especially when searching historical materials and primary sources.
3. There is an historical lack of cataloging. Until relatively recently, disability studies material may not have been identified with relevant subject headings and tags, which can make this research harder to locate. 

Text for this section is adapted from Stacy Reardon and Jennifer Dorner’s Disability Studies Research Guide (UC Berkeley Library) and used with permission.

Keywords that might assist your research include:

• abledness, ableism, ableist, able-bodied, able-bodiedness
• access, accessible, accessibility
• ageism, ageist, aging
• Deaf, deafness, deaf studies (Note: Some Deaf people consider themselves to be a linguistic/cultural minority and not as 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

If you're looking for specific readings or theorizations of a topic, try combining your keyword with:

• 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

Text for this section is adapted from Stacy Reardon and Jennifer Dorner’s Disability Studies Research Guide (UC Berkeley Library) and used with permission.

• Start your search with 1-2 keywords or phrases. If you begin with a long string of words or a very complex search, you may not get many results.
• Narrow your search with AND. If you're searching for 2+ keywords, AND ensures that all keywords will appear in your search results.
  • disability AND assistive technology = find disability and assistive technology
• Broaden your search with OR. OR allows you to search for 2+ keywords at once, but not all keywords have to be in your search results.
  • disability OR assistive technology = find either disability or assistive technology
• To search for an exact phrase, use " ".
  • "assistive technology" = find the phrase assistive technology
  • (Without " ", your results will include the words assistive and technology but they won't necessarily be together)
• To search for variations of a word, use *.
  • disab* = find words that begin with disab (disability, disabilities, disabled, etc.)
• Combine these search tips creatively.
  • (disab* AND "assistive technology") OR (disab* AND "web accessibility") = find either words that begin with disab and the phrase assistive technology or words that begin with disab and the phrase web accessibility
  • ...But if you're not getting any results, simplify your search.
• Limit your results to Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals.
• Filter by publication date.