Welcome to Issue 1 of SRNA’s 2025 Magazine themed on disability and empowerment. I would like to invite you to reframe your thoughts on what it means to be disabled. The definition we’ve come to know of the word “disability,” according to Merriam-Webster, is “a physical, mental, cognitive, or developmental condition that impairs, interferes with, or limits a person’s ability to engage in certain tasks or actions or participate in typical daily activities and interactions.” Rather than stick with this definition, disability studies scholars have broadened its scope. But first, let’s discuss what disability studies and crip theory are and what they do.
Disability Studies, Crip Theory, and Education puts the origin of this field of study and the new, wider definition of “disability” best:
“Disability studies and crip theory emerged out of a need to reimagine, and directly challenge, dominant deficit perspectives of disability in many different contexts. Instead of framing disability as a problem of individual bodies, where the solution to difference is found in often deeply harmful rehabilitation and intervention, disability studies and crip theory allow for a more critical and expansive look at disability as an aspect of identity and culture that holds inherent value. While disability studies and crip theory have been used in academic and activist spaces, the impacts of a more critical and expansive framing of disability have incredibly important impacts on, and reciprocal relationships with, the theory and practice of education. Disability studies and crip theory both work to simultaneously critique and change dominant perspectives of disability in school settings, as it does in academic theory spaces; it challenges teachers, schools, and curriculum to ask questions of the benefits of using deficit perspectives, and what is lost when disability is seen only as a problem to be fixed. In this way, these two fields of inquiry and practice continue to shape, challenge, and push each other toward a more just sense of disability for all.”
This quote may seem a bit dense, but let’s break it down. A “deficit perspective” inherently views disabled people as less capable—just as Merriam-Webster puts it, it is disability as impairment, interference, and limitation. It’s a “problem of individual bodies” rather than any sort of issue with widespread perception of disabled people, and it’s a problem so bad that it necessitates a “solution to difference.”
What if the real problem is not us as disabled people, but the problem instead is with the public perception of disability as something that inherently makes us different in a way that is lesser? In disability theory and crip theory, people with disabilities are not lesser in any way—we simply interact with the world differently. And beyond that, disability acts “as an aspect of identity and culture that holds inherent value” in that disabled people often gather together through organizations like SRNA to share space, share stories, and have solidarity.
We can see this gathering at our in-person events as clear as day—consider our Walk-Run-N-Rolls, events where people with rare neuroimmune disorders and their loved ones gather together and walk, run, or roll alongside each other. During these amazing events, people with disabilities catch up with one another and enjoy time with the people who understand them best—people who also hold a disabled identity.
All this is to say, disability has a lot broader of a definition than what Merriam-Webster says. In this issue of SRNA’s Magazine, we will be covering what it means to be disabled, and how disability does not have to be viewed as a limitation. Through the admittedly-difficult process of acceptance, those with disabilities can create their own definition: a definition that makes them feel empowered.
