Disability studies and assistive technology are two related fields that have long shared common goals-understanding the experience of disability and identifying and addressing relevant issues. Despite these common goals, there are some important differences in what professionals in these fields consider problems, perhaps related to the lack of connection between the fields. To help bridge this gap, we review some of the key literature in disability studies. We present case studies of two research projects in assistive technology and discuss how the field of disability studies influenced that work, led us to identify new or different problems relevant to the field of assistive technology, and helped us to think in new ways about the research process and its impact on the experiences of individuals who live with disability. We also discuss how the field of disability studies has influenced our teaching and highlight some of the key publications and publication venues from which our community may want to draw more deeply in the future.

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Disability is a concept that grows as we think about it, forcing us to adjust our conversations in vocabulary and rhetoric depending on which disability world we inhabit or address. Understanding disability starts with exposure to disabled people's bodyminds in their own spacetime and an appreciation of disability expertise. The disability justice movement pulls the intersectional performance of disability out of the intimate sphere so that it can play a role in policy, an analytic where anthropology should shine. This article is particularly addressed to anthropologists with a new interest in disability and critical disability studies scholars with a frustration with anthropology. I use exemplary analysis of actual dialogues drawn from an autoethnographic record of my own perceived mobility and speech impairments to explore my biopolitical positioning as disabled. Anthropologists have the capacity to move disability theory forward, feeding it with ethnographic fuel. While the anthropology of disability uses insightful ethnographic methods to understand specific impairments in specific contexts, the reflexive turn in anthropology has not yet embraced disability. We are still better off remaining individual disability experts; our collective efforts are still an "embarrassment to power." This article, as part of a collective special issue, aims to change that.Disability is an ingenious way to live. (Neil Marcus) Coffee CupsAt the diner my husband likes because the locals come in wearing overalls and talking cows, the waitress comes with her coffee pot and starts to serve us in the old-fashioned cups and saucers from which I slurp as they are much too top heavy and flat for me to pick up. She says, "I'll just pour you a half a cup, so you don't need to worry about spilling it. I'll come round and keep refilling it." I respond, "Oh, thank you, can you make it the top half?" (From my autoethnographic field notes, October 2015)Disability is one of those concepts that grows as you think about it, forcing you to consider related concepts: identity, impairment, illness, health, intersectionality, and more. Were it not complex, the emergent field of disability studies could not be sustained. As an academic and political exercise, disability studies reframes disability to bring out the nuance appropriate to different projects. 1 We adjust our conversations in vocabulary and rhetoric depending on which disability world we address. Disability Justice Is Good to ThinkUnderstanding disability starts with exposure to disabled people's bodyminds in their own spacetime and an appreciation of disability expertise. The disability justice movement pulls the intersectional performance of disability out of the intimate sphere so that it can play a role in policy, 2 an analytic where anthropology should shine. Disability by definition is remarkable. Disabled people live with the reality that the public wants to define that remarkableness and the knowledge that if they do not manage their human relationships carefully, their remarkable...

Joan Ablon has helped establish the anthropology of impairment-disability and significantly contributed to the role of anthropology in disability studies. In this article, we review the development of and situate Ablon's ethnographic research in the anthropology of impairment-disability. We then address various methodological issues in her work including her ethnographic approach, her grounding in action anthropology and her support for the development of the academic study of disability in anthropology and the careers of disabled anthropologists. The next section of the article examines Ablon's use of the notion of stigma, her understanding of community, and her engagement with disability rights. As examples of themes important to disability studies, we present her discussion of the implications of the ideal of the body beautiful, and gender differences in negotiating intimacy for people with physical differences. We close with a discussion of the future of an anthropology of impairment-disability.

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