July is Disability Pride Month. Do you find yourself avoiding conversations on disabilities? A disability rights activist shares ways to be a better ally and to destigmatize disability in America.

July is Disability Pride Month. Do you find yourself avoiding conversations on disabilities? A disability rights activist shares ways to be a better ally and to destigmatize disability in America.

“Year of the Tiger” author Alice Wong and other disability rights activists provide solutions on how to tackle systemic ableism.

Here are five terms you should know if you want to be a better ally at work — and how to act on them. Privilege: A special right, advantage, or immunity granted or available only to a particular person or group. Microaggressions: Behaviors or actions — whether accidental or purposeful — that subtly undermine someone’s identity by playing into stereotypes or biases. Ableism: Discrimination or social prejudice against people with disabilities. Ableism and ableist language assume that a disability is something that needs to be “fixed.” Benevolent Sexism: Beliefs, values, and attitudes that are covertly misogynistic but take on a seemingly positive tone. Opportunity Gap: A historic and systemic outcome that is the result of hundreds of years of exclusion, oppression, and racism.