Ideas and Frameworks
Language for understanding how disability systems influence everyday life.
Structural Model of Disability
A framework for understanding how disability systems shape participation, mobility, autonomy, stability, and opportunity.
Enforced Barriers
Enforced barriers are structural conditions that restrict participation, mobility, stability, autonomy, or opportunity for people with disabilities. The umbrella includes:
- Enforced dependency
- Enforced immobility
- Enforced insecurity
- Enforced invisibility
Disability Support Service Portability Framework
A framework for making disability supports portable across moves and life transitions so people can maintain continuity, stability, and participation.
Geographic Lock-In
A condition in which disability support systems tied to residency, waiver eligibility, and administrative structures restrict geographic mobility and limit educational, professional, economic, and personal opportunities.
Narrative Fixation
A concept describing how public narratives about a person can become frozen in time and continue shaping perception long after the individual’s identity, goals, work, or life circumstances have evolved.
Conditional Independence
A form of independence that remains dependent on continued access to support, personal care assistance, accessibility, transportation, healthcare, funding structures, and administrative approvals necessary for full participation in daily life.
Invisible Coordination Labor
The unpaid work involved in coordinating disability services, healthcare, transportation, benefits, and daily supports. It can include:
- Logistical work
- Emotional work
- Cognitive work
- Administrative work
Continuity Infrastructure
The systems, supports, policies, and relationships designed to follow a person through transitions such as relocation, marriage, career advancement, or higher education, rather than resetting at each one.
Credibility Labor
The invisible effort required to establish competence, intelligence, legitimacy, and professional capability before being fully recognized or taken seriously.
Permission Economy
A social and policy environment in which participation depends upon obtaining approval from professionals, agencies, gatekeepers, or administrative systems before accessing opportunities, services, or ordinary aspects of life.