Disability & Access
The Invisible Assumption: How Ableism Hides Inside Good Intentions
The most stubborn form of ableism isn't cruelty — it's the quiet, confident belief that disabled people would prefer to be more like you.
The Idea
Ableism is often taught as a story about exclusion — ramps that weren't built, jobs that weren't offered, slurs that were said. But its more persistent form is subtler, and far more interesting to examine: it's a set of assumptions so deeply embedded in how we picture a good life that most people never notice they're holding them. The assumption that independence is superior to interdependence. That a body or mind that works differently is a body or mind that is failing. That the goal, for any disabled person, must be to approximate the non-disabled experience as closely as possible. Disability scholars call this 'ableist normativity' — the unspoken template against which all human bodies and minds are measured. What makes this worth sitting with is that ableism operates most powerfully not in the hearts of cruel people, but in the design of ordinary things: the default pace of a meeting, the format of a job application, the assumption that eye contact signals respect, that pain is always something to be fixed, that needing help is something to be overcome. Disability justice activists make a crucial distinction here: the 'medical model' of disability locates the problem inside the person — their diagnosis, their limitation. The 'social model' locates the problem in the environment — the staircase, not the wheelchair user; the wall of dense text, not the dyslexic reader. That reframe doesn't resolve everything, but it changes what we think the solution looks like.
In the World
In 2016, a non-speaking autistic writer named Jordyn Zimmerman was completing high school and had been assessed, repeatedly, as having severe cognitive impairments — largely because the dominant mode of evaluation required spoken responses she couldn't produce. When she was finally given access to a letterboard and later a tablet to communicate through typing, she began demonstrating complex reasoning, humour, and a detailed interior life that verbal assessments had entirely missed. She went on to earn a master's degree and become an educator and advocate. Her story is told in the documentary 'This Is Not About Me.' What makes it instructive isn't the feel-good arc — it's the mechanism. An entire system had been designed around a single assumption: that fluent speech is the natural channel for intelligence. Nobody in that system intended to erase her. They were following standard practice. The ableism wasn't located in anyone's malice; it was located in the design of the test, in what counted as evidence of a mind. Zimmerman has said that what changed her life wasn't someone believing in her — it was someone handing her a different tool. The access was the intervention. This is the social model made visible: when the environment changes, the 'limitation' can dissolve entirely. The question it leaves open is how many other tools we haven't handed to people yet, because we haven't questioned the test.
Why It Matters
Most of us, at some point, will move through the world in a body or mind that doesn't match what systems were built for — through illness, age, injury, grief, or neurodivergence that goes unrecognised for years. The framework of ableism isn't only relevant if you identify as disabled; it's relevant to anyone who has ever felt like they were failing a standard that was never designed with them in mind. Examining ableism asks a genuinely useful question: who were our institutions and social scripts built for, and who had to adapt silently to fit? That question has practical reach. It changes how you might run a meeting, how you interpret someone's silence, how you think about the colleague who needs more time, the friend who cancels plans, the family member who doesn't engage in the way you expected. Recognising that access is often the intervention — not inspiration, not effort, not a better attitude — can make you a more genuinely useful person to be around, not out of pity, but out of real understanding.
A Question to Ponder
What's one standard you've been measuring yourself or others against that you've never actually chosen — and who decided that standard was normal?
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