Archives: Glossary
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Ableism
able·ism /ˈābəˌlizəm/ noun A system of assigning value to people’s bodies and minds based on societally constructed ideas of normalcy, productivity, desirability, intelligence, excellence, and fitness. These constructed ideas are deeply rooted in eugenics, anti-Blackness, misogyny, colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism. This systemic oppression that leads to people and society determining people’s value based on their…
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Acceptance
Acceptance means training mental health service providers to look at autism and other disabilities as a part of a person’s identity, rather than a problem that needs to be fixed. Acceptance means helping to create a world where autistic people don’t have to camouflage themselves as neurotypical. Acceptance also means giving supports and accommodations to autistic…
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Access Intimacy
Access intimacy is that elusive, hard to describe feeling when someone else “gets” your access needs. The kind of eerie comfort that your disabled self feels with someone on a purely access level. Sometimes it can happen with complete strangers, disabled or not, or sometimes it can be built over years. It could also be…
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Accommodation
Accommodation is fundamentally about not changing the person but changing the environment around the person. Normal Sucks: Author Jonathan Mooney on How Schools Fail Kids with Learning Differences Yet on a programmatic basis, disability policy and other social programs remain enmeshed, even at their best, in accommodation models, where specific proven needs or deficits generate specific…
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Addiction
If addiction is like misguided love, then compassion is a far better approach than punishment. Can You Get Over an Addiction? – The New York Times In her book Unbroken Brain, Maia Szalavitz poses addiction as a neuro-developmental learning disorder, one usually developed while trying to cope with trauma, poverty, shame, or an overreactive nervous…
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ADHD Tax
ADHD Tax The extra costs those with diagnosable inattention, hyperactivity, impulsivity, and/or executive function challenges incur as a result of being inattentive, hyperactive, impulsive, and/or struggling with executive function. Does the ADHD Tax Need to Be So High? At this point you might ask, “What the hell is the ADHD tax?” Answer: it’s the price…
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Advice Process
Almost all Teal organizations use, in one form or another, what an early practitioner (AES) called the “advice process.” It comes in many forms, but the essence is consistent: any person can make any decision after seeking advice from 1) everyone who will be meaningfully affected, and 2) people with expertise in the matter. Advice…
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Alexithymia
Alexithymia (also called emotional blindness) is a condition where you have challenges identifying and describing emotions in the self. Essentially, alexithymia is a difference in emotion processing. The alexithymia & autism guide » NeuroClastic It took me a long time to discover why I respond so strongly to secondhand distress. It turns out that the three…
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Alien
I believe all persons with Autism need the opportunity to become friends with other Autistic people. Without this contact we feel alien to this world. We feel lonely. Feeling like an alien is a slow death. It’s sadness, self-hate, it’s continuously striving to be someone we’re not. It’s waking up each day and functioning in…
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Allistic
The term ‘allistic’ is a synonym for ‘non-autistic’. The term ‘neurotypical’ is used to describe individuals with typical neurological development or functioning. Notably, this term is not an exact synonym of ‘non-autistic’; it is possible to be non-autistic but not neurotypical (e.g., if you have ADHD; see further discussion in Results and Discussion). Autism-related language…
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Aloneness
Aloneness is a characteristic that many creatives embrace and yearn for. Being alone is anything but lonely. Reading, writing, and creating art all demand a personal space where one can be alone in peaceful silence to think, to imagine. As a neurodivergent creative, aloneness is always a requirement for me. It is a prerequisite and…
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Alt Text
Alt text is a written description of an image posted online. Alt text can also be added to images embedded in digital documents (PDFs, Word documents, Google docs, presentations, etc). Alt text has multiple uses, but we are focused on its role as an essential part of web accessibility. Alt text allows visual content to…
