Ableism, Clear Face Mask Emerged as the Top Searches on Google

Searches for “ableism” and “ableist language” are at an all-time high, Google said while revealing the latest search trends. The search giant also saw a rise in queries around “black mental health” globally in June. Online searches for sign language grew in the recent past as well. Apart from the searches showing growing interest around disabilities, Google said that there was a record rise in global searches for “clear face mask” this month as people are trying to prevent the spread of the coronavirus infection.

Google posted the fresh search trends through its Twitter account where it highlighted ableism as one of the top searches in 2020. The company said that it was seeing growing worldwide search interest in the topic this year as people want to understand disabilities across the globe.

In a blog post, Google mentioned that in addition to queries on ableism, searches for ableist language were growing rapidly on its search engine, showing a sign for the disability rights movement. The company also highlighted in a GIF posted on Twitter that Americans searched for sign language 2.5 times more than programming language over the past 30 days. It also noticed an uptick in Google searches around black mental health as the long-term impact of mental health conditions is often considered as a form of disability.

Similarly, Google saw searches for disability pride parades at record highs, with a massive number of queries coming specifically from the UK. The search engine also noticed that the searches for Netflix's disability rights documentary Crip Camp surpassed those for band camp.

“Over the past three decades, the world gained a greater understanding of what disability means, and how disability affects different communities in a myriad of ways. Search trends can shed a light on this emerging understanding,” Google said in its blog post, detailing the search trends.

Pandemic-focussed face mask search at peak
Alongside the disability-focussed queries, Google saw record searches for clear face masks globally. It emerged as people want to stay prevented from COVID-19 and are looking for solutions to live in this new normal situation. Some past trends, however, showed that queries particularly for coronavirus had dropped significantly.

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