2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Designing with the disabled community in mind, such as through universal design or designing assistive devices, is a wide field of inquiry. As we educate our students about designing for disability, our etiquette influences students’ perception of disability. The purpose of this review paper is to identify terminology used in course-based engineering design for disability research papers as well as to provide guidance on appropriate language to refer to disabled individuals. In a systematic review of 60 papers published in engineering education venues, including 55 papers from ASEE venues, we identified papers concentrating on the outcomes of a course-based engineering design project aimed at designing for disability. From these papers, we extracted 339 unique words or phrases used to refer to disabled individuals. To determine the acceptability of extracted terms, we developed a survey including all phrases used more than once along with a random sample of single-occurrence words from the review of course-based engineering design for disability research. Alongside demographic data such as age, disability status, and design experience, participants were asked to rate on a binary scale whether they would use each term. These demographics were collected to ensure disabled voices and diverse demographics are represented. We also analyzed the terms to see if there is shift in responses with each demographic. We present a summary of the percentage of participants who found each term acceptable to use and provide guidelines based on the perceived acceptability of words commonly used to refer to the disabled community in the design engineering education community. Additionally, the participants were given the opportunity to leave an open-ended response which we present for relevant terms. These results are analyzed through the lens of disability studies. These recommendations have the potential to enhance the quality of design engineering education and foster more inclusive practices within the design community.