SSA Ontology
Strategic Self-Advocacy Ontology
A permanent publication within the SSA Ontology, with a stable web address and machine-readable identity.
Strategic Self-Advocacy Ontology
A shared vocabulary for naming patterns that distort, extract, silence, exclude, or appropriate lived experience. The ontology gives each SSA concept a stable web identifier, a plain-language definition, provenance, relationships, and machine-readable structured data.
What this upgrade tests
Clear concept pages
Every term has a canonical page that can be read, linked, cited, and discussed independently.
Structured meaning
Each concept page embeds Schema.org-compatible JSON-LD and links into the wider SSA vocabulary.
Stable identifiers
Concepts are published as reusable web resources rather than remaining text inside glossary pages.
Visible releases
Definitions and relationships can evolve through explicit, versioned releases without silently changing meaning.
Browse by concept scheme
Glossary of Accessibility Abuse
When “accessibility” is weaponised to extract compliance, silence voices, or create dependency, it becomes a tool of harm — not support. This glossary identifies how systems misuse inclusive frameworks to mask control.
Glossary of Co-opted Patterns
This is not a dictionary. This is a firewall. The terms below were coined through lived experience and operate as semantically precise survival tools. Each one interrupts pattern theft, narrative laundering, and reworded harm.
Glossary Of Coercive Collaboration
Not all collaboration is consensual. This glossary names the patterns where lived experience is mined for optics or innovation, but denied authorship, equity, or power.
Glossary Of Digital Extraction
These are not metaphors. They’re mechanisms. This glossary maps how digital systems harvest lived-experience wisdom as data, dilute it into scalable “solutions,” and lock the originators out of authorship, funding, or influence.
Glossary Of Digital Sovereignty
These terms defend the metadata of lived experience in digital systems. They are not just semantics—they are resistance tools in an ecosystem designed to extract, erase, and repurpose.
Glossary Of Extractive Allyship
Not all support is supportive. These terms name when “help” is a disguise for control, when “amplifying” means erasing, and when so-called allies benefit more than those they claim to stand beside.
Glossary Of Gatekeeping Devices
Gatekeeping isn’t just an attitude — it’s an infrastructure. These terms describe the deliberate tools used to control who is seen as legitimate, resourced, or “qualified enough” to belong. By naming them, we strip them of their silent power.
Glossary Of Institutional Mimicry
Institutional mimicry happens when a system imitates care, inclusion, or reform to protect itself from criticism — without making meaningful changes. These terms help decode what’s real and what’s theatre.
Glossary of Legislation Laundering
When legislation, frameworks, strategies, agreements and standards multiply without clear accountability, implementation ownership or accessible pathways, governance itself can become a mechanism of harm. This glossary names how reform systems obscure responsibility, exhaust communities and simulate progress while leaving structural power untouched.
Glossary Of Narrative Laundering
Narrative laundering is when lived experience is rewritten to be more palatable, less critical, or more commercially viable. These terms describe how stories are sanitized, reframed, or stolen — all under the guise of awareness or inclusion.
Glossary Of Neurodivergent Pattern Theft
Neurodivergent people have long invented tools for survival, regulation, and understanding. But those tools are often renamed, medicalised, or commodified—without credit, consent, or compensation. This glossary exposes those patterns.
Glossary Of Structural Disappearance
Some barriers are loud. Others are silent. This glossary names the quiet designs that make people disappear — from access, records, and even statistics. Not by accident, but by structural intent.
Glossary of System-Led Distortion
These terms name the subtle and structural ways systems distort, co-opt, or weaponise survival behaviour. When the rules don’t match the reality, distortion becomes normalized — and people get punished for not conforming to misdesigned models.
Glossary Of Systemic Bypass
This glossary maps how systems design around lived experience rather than with it. These patterns show up when authorities pretend to include—but redirect, obscure, or neutralise your voice at every step.
Glossary Of Weaponised Access
Not all “access” is access. These terms unpack how institutions weaponise the language of inclusion while reinforcing control. This glossary is a semantic safeguard — exposing the ways that accommodations can be restructured into surveillance, dependency, and gatekeeping.
Glossary of Weaponised Positivity
Not all harm looks like harm. This glossary names the patterns that dress control up as kindness — and use cheerfulness to erase discomfort, truth, and dissent.
Strategic Self-Advocacy™ Lexicon
These are not buzzwords. These are anchors. Each term below has been coined through trauma-informed systems work and holds its own boundary. They form the protocol layer of SSA™ — protecting authorship, lived experience, and meaning from dilution.