Are you ready to be anti-ableist in 2021?

Make a New Year’s Resolution to add anti-ableism to your skillset from 2021 going forward.

Authors note: Because of Medium’s refusal to address its accessibility issues for both authors and readers, I’ve moved my last three years of blogs to Substack. Please sign up there for notices of all new articles. Also, I will be updating older articles (like this one) and the updates will only be published on Substack. Thank you for your continued readership and support.

As I start to think about the standard “year-end” / wrap-up articles related to accessibility, this one seems pretty obvious.

We need more people to be anti-ableist.

Ableism is a set of beliefs or practices that devalue and discriminate against people with physical, intellectual, or psychiatric disabilities and often rests on the assumption that disabled people need to be “fixed” and are not equal to non-disabled individuals.

Anti-ableism is the opposite of ableism, with a practical focus on strategies, theories, actions, and practices that challenge and counter ableism, inequalities, prejudices, and discrimination based on any type of disability — including visible, invisible, learning, developmental, physical, or mental health.