On Being Disablised – What 57 000 Media Articles Say About Society (#14)

Hi there 👋 I made this photo collage to capture a feeling: the experience of being "disablised."

To be Disablised is a Process, Not a State

I have used a wheelchair for more than thirty years. When I move about in the world, I often find myself depicted on signs. A person in a wheelchair. Often paired with an arrow pointing somewhere else (Figure 1).

This is how the story typically goes: I arrive at a building. There's a sign with a person in a wheelchair and an arrow pointing around the corner. I already know what it means. I've followed hundreds of such arrows before. A longer route, a side entrance, a solo travel. A building saying that it wasn't expecting me at the front door, showing me its backside.

While each instance may seem minor, together they create a narrative of deviation and not fully belonging that compounds over time.

I chose the word "disablised" in the title deliberately. It names something that is done to a person [1]. Not by a body or an impairment, but by barriers, attitudes, and bias. You can compare it to how people are racialised, genderised or sexualised. The terms work the same way: they point to an active process, not a fixed state.

Recently, my colleagues Daniel Wojahn, Stina Ericsson, and I published a study where we analysed nearly 57,000 articles from Swedish print media, spanning four decades [2]. In the article, we tracked how Swedish media name dis/ability.

The Words Changed – The With/Without Thinking Didn't

We found that the terms changed regularly (Figure 2). Handikapp (handicap) gave way to funktionshinder (functional hindrance), then funktionsnedsättning (functional deficit), then funktionsvariation (functional variation). Each new word was introduced with the hope of changing how society understands disability.

None has worked as intended.

One example is what happened to the term “funktionsvariation”, which was first introduced on Facebook as a way to describe and discuss diversity. The word swiftly caught on, also in the media. But, as it was adopted and used, it became entangled in the existing patterns of norm and deviation, as persons “with” and “without” functional variation.

In the media texts, every term ended up meaning the same thing: something attributed to an individual, understood to deviate from the norm. The words changed. The with/without thinking stayed. And with it, the underlying logic: disability as a property of a body, not a relationship between a person and a designed environment.

What the Signs Do, the Words Do Too

We’ve spent 50 years focusing on the person in the chair, as if the chair is the problem, rather than the two steps in front of the door.

Look at the collage again. Six signs. Six arrows. Six times a person using a wheelchair is singled out and redirected.

These signs do visually what the language does linguistically. They mark a body, not a situation. They say: This person is the reason for that entrance. It is telling, almost ironic, that the International Symbol of Access depicts a person, not a situation or an environment.

The signs actually produce deviation. They aren't solving the problem. The signs are the problem made visible [see #9].

The Silence is Also a Categorisation

One finding that has stayed with me from our study is this: ablised positions, those on the privileged, normative side, are largely denamed. Not named at all.

When someone is described as a person med funktionsnedsättning ("person with a functional deficit"), what is the corresponding term for everyone else? There typically isn't one. They are simply personer (people). Unmarked. Default. The norm.

The same pattern plays out on signs. The marked entrance has a wheelchair symbol and an arrow. The unmarked entrance has nothing. No sign. No explanation needed.

The silence is not neutral. This is how ableism operates: by being invisible to those it serves.

In earlier editions of Nonclusive by Design, I have written about how categorisation is an act, always done to someone by someone [see #7], and about how the conditional access paradigm crumbles when you say "I already belong" [see #9]. Our media study shows the scale of the pattern, and how remarkably resistant it is to change. Four decades. The same marked/unmarked pattern, reproduced over and over.

Table 1. Overview of how marked and unmarked positions function in language and signage.

In Table 1, I show how linguistic labels and physical signage go together. The Deviation is marked and visible both in language and signage, whereas the Norm is invisible and unmarked. Linguistically, expressions such as “Persons without [X]” do exist, but they are the exception, and they only occur when the Deviation is also named. The vast majority of cases of the Norm are unmarked, in both language and signage.

If New Words Don't Change Thinking, What Does?

Our study suggests that occasional shifts in terminology, while well-intended, will keep occurring without producing any real change as long as the underlying structures remain the same. The words get absorbed. The system continues.

So what might actually shift the pattern? In our research within The Syntax of Equality project, we have been exploring nonclusive categorisation, where you categorise situations and functions instead of bodies and persons [3, 4].

We use the word “syntax” because, like language, design strings elements together into sequences that carry meaning. A door, a sign, an arrow, a detour: that is a sentence, and it says something about who belongs. Nonclusive design can be a sign that shows a room layout instead of displaying a wheelchair pictogram or a door that shows its width instead of who it is meant for [see #7].

These are small examples, but they point to a different starting position. Not: "Who qualifies for access?" but: "What does this space offer?"

Your Turn

Next time you see an entrance marked with a body, notice also the unmarked entrance. That silence is also a categorisation.

If you spot examples of this, please take a photo and share it here. I'd love to see what you notice when you start looking for both the marked and the unmarked.

The last newsletter, in which I revisited and re-read some early texts on Universal Design, resonated with many of you, and I had several very interesting and valuable discussions in the comment section. Thank you!

Let's keep this discussion going 😊

Notes and References

This piece builds on findings from The Syntax of Equality project, where we investigate situation-based categorisation and nonclusive design through citizen science and field observations.

A special thanks to Stina Ericsson, who read and commented on this edition 🌸

Do you want to use the photos or illustrations in a publication, presentation, or video? Go ahead, and please tell me how you use them and what you learn 👍

References:

1. Campbell, F. (1999). Refleshingly Disabled: Interrogations into the Corporeality of 'Disablised' Bodies. Australian Feminist Law Journal, 12(1), 57–80.
2. Wojahn, D., Ericsson, S., & Hedvall, P. O. (2024). Disablised or Ablised?: Linguistic Categorisations of Dis/ability in Swedish Print Media Over Time. Disability Studies Quarterly, 44(1). https://doi.org/10.18061/dsq.v44i1.7554
3. Ericsson, S., & Hedvall, P. O. (2024). Situation, Non-categorisation, and Variation—Conveying Nonclusion Through Text and Image. In Difference – Sketching, Visualising and Challenging Universal Design in Sweden (Vol. 19, pp. 31–50). Design for All Institute of India.
4. Hedvall, P. O., & Ericsson, S. (2024). From Inclusive to Nonclusive Design – A Shift in Categorisation. In Difference – Sketching, Visualising and challenging Universal Design in Sweden (Vol. 19, pp. 10–30). Design for All Institute of India. http://designforall.in/?mdocs-file=2470