Disability Discourse Matters Relaunches with Enhanced Dashboards, Smarter AI, and Expanded Capacity

After a six-month hiatus, Disability Discourse Matters (DDM) is proud to announce our return with major improvements to our public dashboards, data processing systems, and AI scoring mechanisms. Our mission remains the same: to track how political leaders in the United States talk about disability and to understand how those narratives shape policy, practice, and everyday experience.

Our dashboards are now fully interactive and current through October 31, 2025, providing accessible, real-time insights into how disability is discussed across branches of government. Visitors can explore the updated White House and Cabinet Dashboard at whitehousecabinet.netlify.app, our new Senate Dashboard at ddmsenatedashboard.netlify.app, and our Policy Discourse Analysis, which examines proposed legislation affecting individuals with disabilities, at disabilitydiscoursematters.org/policy-discourse-analysis.

As of October 31, 2025, the White House and Cabinet Dashboard has analyzed official statements from 15 administration officials over a 10-month period, producing an overall average score of 2.83 on our four-point scale of disability discourse. Meanwhile, the Senate Dashboard has analyzed statements from 10 senators and is currently in beta testing, with additional senators and data points being added over the coming weeks. Senator-level statements are now tracked over time to capture shifts in tone and framing, allowing for longitudinal analysis of disability discourse across the legislative branch.

Every elected official and political appointee analyzed by DDM now receives an individual DDM Score, which reflects the average tone of their public statements about disability. This makes it possible to compare leaders’ language patterns and to understand whether their communication generally aligns with harmful, deficit-based, or respectful frames. Scores are based on the following distribution:

1 = Uses hate or ableist speech and/or encourages violence

2 = Is critical of the abilities of individuals with disabilities

3 = Uses a deficit frame regarding social, cognitive, physical, or employment abilities

4 = Values the abilities and full humanity of individuals with disabilities

In addition to these improvements, DDM has identified 32 proposed bills impacting individuals with disabilities. The proposed legislation spans key areas such as Education (21.9%), Social Security (15.6%), Accessibility (15.6%), and Research (12.5%), with the majority introduced by Democrats (65.6%) and the remainder by Republicans (34.4%). Download pdf for more information:

Disability Disourse Update 10.31.25.pdf

Download PDF • 761KB

Over the past six months, we have made substantial technical improvements to our data infrastructure and analytic models. In response to feedback that some statements were previously scored too high or too low, we overhauled our AI pipelines to better reflect human reasoning and contextual nuance. Our validation tests show that AI and human scorers now agree on approximately 99 percent of statements across the White House and Cabinet dataset and 96 percent across the Senate dataset. These results mark a significant improvement in the precision and reliability of our scoring process.

We also developed sophisticated backend code that enables us to process and score statements from dozens of elected leaders simultaneously. This expansion dramatically increases the speed and scale of our analyses, allowing DDM to track emerging discourse at a faster speed. Together, these advances ensure our results are both highly accurate and replicable, setting a new standard for responsible AI use in social science research.

Looking ahead, we are expanding our analyses to include all members of Congress and the Judiciary Branch during 2026. This scaling effort will provide a more comprehensive, longitudinal view of disability discourse across all branches of government. We are deeply grateful to our partners and the public for their patience and encouragement during this period of recalibration and growth. With stronger data systems, smarter AI, and a renewed commitment to transparency, Disability Discourse Matters is back — and better equipped than ever to map how language shapes policy.

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Disability Discourse Matters is an independent initiative of the Education Collaboratory at Yale University. The project systematically tracks shifts in disability-related discourse to assess whether and how language influences U.S. policy affecting individuals with disabilities. Visit www.disabilitydiscoursematters.org to explore our interactive dashboards and view the latest data.