Race, Disability and Accessibility Technology

As part of a team of researchers, we have been exploring best practices in incorporating disability justice principles into accessibility research and more generally thinking about how to best incorporate multi-racial, and associated multi-cultural and multi-lingual, perspectives into accessibility work in a deep way. Most of the accessibility research that was published in the past does not mention race, or treats it as a simple label rather than asking how it impacts disability experiences. This eliminates whole areas of need and vital perspectives from the work we do.

This has resulted in two articles. The first, “Working at the Intersection of Race, Disability, and Accessibility” [1] asks how research in accessibility can do a better job of including disabled persons as whole, diverse people, rather than separating disability from a person’s race and ethnicity. In the paper, we present a series of case studies of other researchers’ work exploring positive examples of work that looks more deeply at this intersection and reflect on teaching at the intersection of race, disability, and technology. This paper highlights the value of considering how constructs of race and disability work alongside each other within accessibility research studies, designs of socio-technical systems, and education. Our analysis provides recommendations towards establishing this research direction.

The second, “Race, Disability, and Technology: A Call to Action for Accessibility Researchers” [2] examines what we learned from applying the framework featured in the first. This time, we reflect on our own experience applying the framework and reflect on tensions and considerations that arise while pursuing this work.

[1] Christina N. Harrington, Aashaka Desai, Aaleyah Lewis, Sanika Moharana, Anne Spencer Ross, Jennifer Mankoff: Working at the Intersection of Race, Disability and Accessibility. ASSETS 2023: 26:1-26:18 (pdf)