It can also sometimes be hard for people to place their disability into a single disability category for instance, would someone with Irlen Syndrome, an optic nerve disorder that leaves people with no depth perception and processing difficulties with written text, be a sensory disability since it alters how one sees the world, or would it be a cognitive disability because of it impacts learning?

Blurred Lines in Disability Categorization

Price notes that categorization of disability can be unhelpful because it can reaffirm existing relations of power and oppression, and that we have to be wary of categorization systems that may work to separate disabled people into those deemed worthy or unworthy by neoliberal aims. For instance, disabled folks may use categorization to distance themselves from individuals deemed intellectually disabled because of histories of abled people being infantalizing toward disabled people out of an ableist assumption that all disabled people were intellectually disabled. However, the categorization can aid in the abandonment of intellectually disabled people by others.

Price notes that in Disability Studies, mobility refers to whether an individual's bodymind moves in a particular way, for instance walking or rolling. Mobility is also used in disability studies as a category, for instance mobility disability.

Mobility in Disability Studies

Price, M. (2024). Crip Spacetime. Duke University Press.

Crip Spacetime

Price's Critique of Disability Categorization

Price notes that participants discussed how mobility needs weren't always visible and their mobility was impacted by not just the accessibility of a physical space but also by time and relations.

Mobility Visibility

Price notes that often disabled people are asked to rely on access workers, whether it be interpreters, captioners, paratransit drivers, etc. While these individuals are often seen as givens in systems of creating access under an accommodations-based-framework, there can can be problems when these individuals act in ways that create inaccess.

Relationships and Mobility

Price discusses how interviewees noted that they often felt the need to work to make themselves indepensible in often unsecure adjunct positions because many disabled adjunct faculty felt like they both would not be seen as hireable for a tenure-track position and they aren't able to move between universities as easily as non-disabled adjuncts because of having medical care and paramedical care situated in on geographic area.

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