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Race, Disability and Accessibility Technology

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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)

[2] Aashaka Desai, Aaleyah Lewis, Sanika Moharana, Anne Spencer Ross, Jennifer Mankoff, Christina N. Harrington. Race, Disability, and Technology: A Call to Action for Accessibility Researchers.ACM Trans. Access. Comput. 19(1): 3:1-3:31 (2026) (html)

Who Gets to Future?

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Picture of potted plants and a bench with the word Africatown in the background, painted in bright red and green colors

Who Gets to Future? Race, Representation, and Design Methods in Africatown

Jasper Tran O’Leary, Sara Zewde, Jennifer Mankoff , Daniela K. Rosner
CHI 2019

This paper draws on a collaborative project called the Africatown Activation to examine the role design practices play in contributing to (or conspiring against) the flourishing of the Black community in Seattle, Washington. Specifically, we describe the efforts of a community group called Africatown to design and build an installation that counters decades of disinvestment and ongoing displacement in the historically Black Central Area neighborhood. Our analysis suggests that despite efforts to include community, conventional design practices may perpetuate forms of institutional racism: enabling activities of community engagement that may further legitimate racialized forms of displacement. We discuss how focusing on amplifying the legacies of imagination already at work may help us move beyond a simple reading of design as the solution to systemic forms of oppression.