Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement (A Norton Short)

In fact, the stories aren’t really about disabled people at all. These stories, filtered through abled imaginations, simply reinforce tired tropes about technological progress and techno-optimism and the progressive power of engineering. The people with disabilities are secondary characters; the real story is about the triumphant march of technolog

The medical model is the idea that disability is a malady, something outside the norm that needs to be addressed, cured, eliminated, or remediated through medical or therapeutic intervention. Under this model, disability is something to root out, something to work against, something to fear or pity. Disability is framed as a problem that resides in

The medical model is the idea that disability is a malady, something outside the norm that needs to be addressed, cured, eliminated, or remediated through medical or therapeutic intervention. Under this model, disability is something to root out, something to work against, something to fear or pity. Disability is framed as a problem that resides in

This trope implies that to be good disabled people, we have to be constantly fighting against our bodies or minds in some way.

We need to be wary of technoableism—technology development and marketing that makes it seem like disability is a big, bad thing that needs to be downplayed or eliminated.

McLain pointed out that most studies characterizing autism are of white eight-to-twelve-year-old boys. She also noted that the stereotypes of autistic people as robotic are often drawn from examples of traumatized autistic people. This is because many autistic people have been traumatized—if not through ABA therapy, then through living in a world t

We’ve borne witness to myriad dehumanizing narratives about disabled, particularly neurodivergent, people as “useless eaters” (a Nazi term) and “degenerates” (in the United

This led into a broader discussion of games and digital technologies that work well for autistic people. Gardiner mentioned the Sims as another game that autistic people like, and later Awni mentioned Discord as a social platform “easily adapted by autistic users to facilitate autistic-styled communication due to its flexibility both with custom em

Former poster children—literally what they were called and where that term comes from—were called Jerry’s Kids. In the actual telethons, Jerry Lewis waxed on about the horrible fate awaiting children with muscular dystrophy.