DISCO-Tech: A Framework for Resisting Ableism in Emerging Technologies

Background: Emerging educational technologies like artificial intelligence, automated assessment, and online proctoring have been adopted quickly across higher education, often without enough critical examination of how they affect disabled students and faculty. No comprehensive framework has existed to analyze how these technologies, as designed, marketed, and implemented by institutions, both reflect and shape understandings of disability. Technologies designed for disabled people often view disability as a problem to fix rather than a valued aspect of human diversity, thus reproducing the inequities institutions claim to address. Focus of Study: This paper introduces DISCO-Tech (DISability COnservation Technology Framework), a conceptual tool for critically analyzing how educational technologies position disability. The framework synthesizes Shew’s critique of technoableism, Costanza-Chock’s design justice principles, and crip technoscience into a unified analytical structure grounded in higher education contexts. DISCO-Tech considers not only whether a technology is accessible but also whether it conserves disability as a valued aspect of human diversity and whether it reflects disabled people’s lived experiences rather than idealized narratives of unrestricted access. Research Design: This paper employs theoretical analysis grounded in critical disability studies, interpretive scholarship, and disability activist knowledge. DISCO-Tech is organized around two intersecting axes (Conservation versus Normalization and Lived Experience versus Idealization), creating four analytical quadrants. The framework is illustrated through applied analysis of learning management systems, AI tutoring tools, and proctoring platforms, showing how it reveals ableist assumptions that single-axis evaluations overlook. Conclusions: We argue that moving beyond accessibility compliance requires analytical tools that center disability as a valued form of human diversity rather than a deficit to be fixed. DISCO-Tech shows how technologies that appear inclusive can simultaneously erase disability identity, impose normative expectations, and create new burdens for disabled people, contradictions only visible through multidimensional analysis. We suggest this framework for faculty development, institutional technology review, vendor evaluation, and research at the intersection of disability and educational technology.