In this paper, we examine why promises of empowerment through AT continue to fall short for many underserved populations, even as new innovations emerge every day. We found that low-income, racially diverse, and disabled families usually bear higher costs of access due to bureaucratic red tape that disproportionately affects them. We argue that accessibility research needs a new framework — one that recognizes the sociopolitical realities shaping how families navigate and sustain access. To that end, we introduce the concept of minor resistance to capture the everyday strategies families devise to exercise agency within unequal power dynamics. By focusing on these grassroots practices, we show how technology can be reimagined to help communities build collective power.
Stacy Hsueh, Danielle Van Dusen, Anat Caspi, and Jennifer Mankoff. 2025. Minor Resistance: The Everyday Politics and Power Dynamics of Assistive Technology Adoption. In Proceedings of the 27th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS ’25), October 26-29, 2025, Denver, CO, USA.