Glossary

A working definition by Talila "TL" Lewis: "A system that places value on people’s bodies and minds based on societally constructed ideas of normality, intelligence, excellence, desirability, and productivity. These constructed ideas are deeply rooted in anti-Blackness, eugenics, misogyny, colonialism, imperialism and capitalism. This form of systemic oppression leads to people and society determining who is valuable and worthy based on a person’s language, appearance, religion and/or their ability to satisfactorily [re]produce, excel and "behave." You do not have to be disabled to experience ableism" (Lewis, 2021).

The Accessible Canada Act is a Canada-wide accessibility act that applies to the federal public sector, Crown corporations, and all federally-regulated organizations, building on the Canadian Human Rights Act and focuses on the prohibition of discrimination based on disability. 

The requirements a person has in order to fully participate in their environment or community. These access needs may vary from context to context and day to day.  

When serving one access need creates an access barrier for someone else. An example of access friction could be someone who has a support animal and someone who has a pet dander allergy in the same class section. 

The Accessible Learning Policy is one of the policies at George Brown College related to accessibility. This policy establishes guidelines to make learning accessible and to promote social inclusion for students with disabilities enrolled in or applying for academic programs at George Brown College. It is meant to clarify the mandate, role, and responsibilities of accommodations, and provide policy guidelines for all those involved in creating an accessible learning environment at the College.

The Accessible Media Policy is one of the policies at George Brown College related to accessibility. This policy establishes guidelines and procedures for ensuring all media resources, including audio-visual, audio-only, and print materials are accessible to and inclusive of the diverse learning and teaching needs of all students and employees of the college.

Anti-oppressive practice (AOP) involves “unlearning the tools of oppression and dismantling inequitable systems” (Berila, 2016, p. 4). The practice of anti-oppression is the intentional effort to work from an anti-oppression framework through which the systems of individual, structural, and systemic oppression are understood

Anti-racist pedagogy is a holistic approach that goes beyond implementing inclusive teaching methods to tackle the structures that produce and reproduce racial inequalities. 

Anti-racist pedagogy (ARP) is a part of the process of fighting racism. Despite the common assumption that “pedagogy” refers only to what an instructor does in the classroom, “anti-racist pedagogy is an organizing effort for institutional and social change that is much broader than teaching in the classroom” (Kishimoto, 2018, p. 540). Anti-racism locates the roots of problems in power and policies rather than groups of people or individuals, advocates for racial equality, and confronts inequalities rather than allowing them to continue unchallenged (Kendi, 2019). It begins by recognizing and speaking out against the ways that individuals, teaching practices, curricula, policies, and institutions can contribute to racism. Learn more in our Anti-Racist Pedagogy webpage.

The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005 (AODA) is an Ontario law mandating that organizations must follow standards to become more accessible to people with disabilities. The goal for the province is to be fully accessible by 2025. All levels of government, private sectors, and non-profits must comply with this legislation. AODA website.

Any item, piece of equipment, software program, or product system that is used to increase, maintain, or improve the functional capabilities of persons with disabilities. (The Assistive Technology Industry Association (ATIA)) 

Tom Humphries coined the term audism in his 1977 dissertation, describing it as “the notion that one is superior based on one’s ability to hear or to behave in the manner of one who hears.” The concept of audism re-emerged in the 1990s, beginning with the work Mask of Benevolence: Disabling the Deaf Community (1992) by American psychologist and speech researcher Harlan L. Lane. Lane described audism as a way for the hearing to dominate the Deaf community.

Deaf-gain (in contrast to hearing loss) is defined as a “reframing of ‘Deaf’ as a form of sensory and cognitive diversity that has the potential to contribute to the greater good of humanity” (Bauman and Murray, 2009). For example, discoveries have been made in the fields of language, linguistics, cognitive science, technology, sociology, architecture, education, and transnational cultures due to the contributions of Deaf and Signing Communities (ibid.). For more about oppressions rooted in audism, visit: Rochester Institute for the Deaf Info Guides, Gallaudet University, this Canadian Hearing Society report, and the Canadian Association of the Deaf.

The amount of information that working memory can hold at one time. In educational psychologist John Sweller’s 1988 journal article, he describes cognitive load theory, which argues that working memory has a limited capacity, and that instructional methods should avoid overloading it with additional activities that don’t directly contribute to learning.

A field of study that questions systems of power and questions social norms and social structures that stigmatize disablement. 

Disability is defined differently across laws, policies, advocacy, and academic literature. Medical model definitions focus on diagnoses, causes or symptoms that tend to go together across large populations. Social models of disability focus on how the society around a person disables them. Legal requirements tend to define disability in terms of functional limitations: otherwise “normal” capacities that disabled people cannot do without “abnormal” difficulty or “additional” supports.

Disability Justice is a social movement, a set of strategies, and a way of engaging with the world that centers intersectional and liberatory approaches to disability and access. 

• Sometimes, people use the term “disability justice” when they mean “disability rights” or “disability inclusion.” But these are all different frameworks! 
• Disability inclusion is a broad term to describe approaches to advance access and inclusion for disabled people. 
• Disability rights work focuses on affirming the legal and civil rights of disabled people. 

Both paradigms focus on including disabled people into the world as it currently exists. A Disability Justice lens is invested in building a new world together, by dismantling the systems of power that shape our society and centring the wisdom and experiences of Black, Indigenous and racialized queer and trans disabled people.

There is no single definition of Indigenous knowledge. The worldviews of Indigenous peoples reflect the unique cultures, languages, governance systems, and histories of Indigenous peoples from a particular location and are dynamic and evolve over time. Knowledge-holders are the only people who can truly define Indigenous knowledge for their communities. 

The Integrated Accessibility Standards Regulation outlines requirements for organizations to create, provide, and receive information and communications that are accessible for people with disabilities.

An overlapping and interdependent system of discrimination and access to resources resulting from the interconnectedness of social identities including race, gender and gender identity, ability, and class.

An intersectional framework can help us to acknowledge the ways that historically ingrained prejudices are built into our institutions, creating barriers and limiting opportunities for many. The term intersectionality was first coined in 1989 by law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw as a way to describe how gender, race, and class intersect to create an interdependent system of discrimination and differential access to resources. This definition is now in wide use, recognizing that the combination of various social identities, together, produce something unique and distinct from any one form of discrimination standing alone (OHRC, 2001). As Crenshaw says, “intersectionality is a lens through which you can see where power comes and collides, where it interlocks and intersects. Below is a video where she explains more:

Kimberlé Crenshaw: What is Intersectionality? (2-minute video)

Universal Design for Learning’s (UDL) framework main goal is for educators to facilitate building learner capacity to actively participate in making choices in service of their learning goals. The UDL Guidelines inform the design of learning environments to support learner agency that is: 

• Purposeful - internalized self-efficacy, acting in ways that are personally and socially meaningful.
• Reflective - self-awareness and metacognition to identify internal motivations and external influences that support learning and make adjustments when necessary.
• Resourceful - understanding and applying assets, strengths, resources, and linguistic and cultural capital.
• Authentic - increasing comprehension and deepening understanding in ways that are genuine.
• Strategic - setting goals and monitoring learning with intentionality and playfulness.
• Action-oriented - self-directed and collective action in pursuit of learning goals. 

Masking is a strategy used by some neurodivergent or autistic people, consciously or unconsciously, to appear neurotypical to blend in and be more accepted in society. Masking can happen in formal situations such as at school or work and in informal situations such as at home with family or socializing with friends. While this strategy can help them get by at school, work and in social situations, it can have a devastating impact on mental health, sense of self and access to an autism diagnosis.

This is distinct from the practice of wearing masks for safety and to reduce the spread of communicable illness.

The Ontario Human Rights Commission (the OHRC) works to identify the root causes of discrimination, and to bring about broad, systemic change to remove them. It develops policies and provides public education, monitors human rights, does research and analysis, and conducts human rights public interest inquiries. was established in the Canadian province of Ontario on March 29, 1961, to administer the Ontario Human Rights Code.

The term “Disability Justice” was coined out of conversations between disabled queer women of colouractivists in 2005, including Patty Berne of Sins Invalid (and Mia Mingus & Stacy Milbern, who eventually joined with Leroy Moore, Eli Clare, and Sebastian Margaret) seeking to challenge civil rights movements that were fighting to be included in existing structures and spaces.

As Sins Invalid writes, "Disability Justice was built because the Disability Rights Movement and Disability Studies do not inherently centralize the needs and experiences of folks experiencing intersectional oppression, such as disabled people of color, immigrants with disabilities, queers with disabilities, trans and gender non-conforming people with disabilities, people with disabilities who are houseless, people with disabilities who are incarcerated, people with disabilities who have had their ancestral lands stolen, amongst others."

The Disability Justice framework recognizes how white supremacy, colonialism, capitalism, cisheteropatriarchy, and ableism all work together in reproducing the idea that some people's bodies and minds are ‘deviant’, ‘unproductive’, ‘disposable’ and/or ‘invalid’. 

Read more here about the 10 principles of disability justice10 principles of disability justice. 

In order to respect the disruptive spirit of this paradigm, it’s important not to simply add it to an “equity, diversity, and inclusion” checklist. Instead, Disability Justice provokes us to ask: what would post-secondary education look like if it was fundamentally transformed? What would post-secondary education look like if we placed the needs and leadership of Black, Indigenous, racialized queer and trans disabled people at the centre of our vision? 

Software programs that allow blind or visually impaired users to read the text that is displayed on the computer screen with a speech synthesizer or braille display. (American Foundation for the Blind) 

A disruption in the normal flow of rhythm of speech. Characteristics may include repetition of sounds, syllables, words or phrases, hesitations, prolongations or interjections.

Stigma refers to a person having an attribute that marks them as different and leads them to be devalued in the eyes of others. (OHRC)

The design of curriculum and education environments that anticipate the presence of trauma in the lives of learners and the ongoing responsive development of resources and safer spaces that support success. Trauma-Aware Teaching Checklist.

Tinnitus (pronounced tih-NITE-us or TIN-uh-tus) is the perception of sound that does not have an external source, so other people cannot hear it. Tinnitus is commonly described as a ringing sound, but some people hear other types of sounds, such as roaring or buzzing. 

UDL is a framework for teaching and learning, created by CAST. It is based on the principles of Universal Design in architecture, which seek to ensure that built environments can be used to the greatest extent possible by as many people as possible. Just like Universal Design asserts that people with a variety of different access needs can and should fully participate in public space, UDL assumes that learners who are traditionally failed and pushed out of classroom environments – including but not limited to learners with disabilities – are valuable members of a learning community who deserve to be supported.

To learn more about UDL, visit the TLX UDL webpages.

You may also access the open educational resource certificate course: Universal Design for Learning: Inspiring Equity and Inclusion in Higher Education.

For those interested in taking part in GBC’s UDL certification cohort, you can fill out a registration form to sign up for the next offering.

Learner variability is the term used to describe how unique and varied we are in how we learn. 

Visual privilege refers to the societal advantages and benefits that come with being sighted in a world primarily designed for those with vision. This privilege can manifest in various ways, such as:

• Access to Information: Most information is presented visually, from signs and instructions to digital content, which can exclude or disadvantage those with visual impairments.
• Mobility and Navigation: Navigating spaces is generally easier for sighted individuals, as they can rely on visual cues that may not be accessible to those with visual disabilities.
• Social Perceptions: Sighted individuals may experience fewer stereotypes or biases regarding their capabilities, while those with visual impairments often face misconceptions.