Although the concept of literacy has continued to evolve through the work of innovative scholars and educators, conventional understandings of literacy still abound within published scholarship. Pushing past these traditional notions of literacy, a small subset of scholars has advocated for a broadened conceptualization of literacy. Labeled inclusive literacy, this relatively new approach to literacy draws from both socially and cultural situated literacy practices (Street, 1984) and multimodal literacy practices (Kress & VanLeeuwen, 2001), as it takes into account diverse symbol systems and acknowledges literacy’s part in daily practices. Further, inclusive literacy values all literacy experiences and works to include children with disabilities, a group that is so often overlooked in regard to literacy learning (Flewitt et al., 2009). Grounded in Critical Disability Studies and language ideology theories, this literature review seeks to explore the diverging disability ideologies found in research published on inclusive literacy practices and the ways researchers position students with disabilities. Specifically, this analysis examines the myriad ways scholars take up or fail to acknowledge the term disability as a means to understand the ways that language use is connected to disability ideologies (Irvine & Gal, 2000).

Parents of individuals with dis/abilities often grapple with their child’s dis/ability, as parents mediate their own experiences surrounding dis/ability. This research specifically investigates the literacy narratives in which parents reveal the literacy tools and practices they engaged with and in to aid in forming their own conceptions of dis/ability. Through narrative inquiry, three interviews with parents of children with dis/abilities were analyzed using postconventional perspectives of dis/ability to highlight the destabilization and multifaceted nature of dis/ability and the dis/ability experience. Findings drawn from parents’ literacy narratives suggest that parents have literacy experiences that stretch well beyond themselves and their immediate families and into the larger dis/ability community. Implications show that more pedagogical and communal resources are needed to support parents within the dis/ability community, as they search for ways to connect with others for emotional and educational purposes.