Not a "Typical Expat": An Autoethnographic Account on Accessible Relocation
Zeynep Yildiz, Caroline Karmann, Kathrin Gerling · 2024 · ASSETS 2024: 26th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility · doi:10.1145/3663548.3688546
Summary
This experience report presents an autoethnographic account of the first author Zeynep Yildiz’s relocation from Turkey to Germany as a postdoctoral researcher with a mobility disability caused by a rare myopathy. Using reflexive thematic analysis of a handwritten relocation diary kept over three months, the paper traces accessibility challenges across three chronological phases: pre-relocation decision-making, moving in and the first days, and the post-relocation period after two months. Before relocating, Zeynep found that apartment-searching platforms offered only a binary "barrier-free" filter oriented toward wheelchair users, which did not match her specific and customizable access needs. She relied on a Turkish expat community in Germany to find suitable housing through direct landlord contact and video walkthroughs. During the initial settling period, making disability-related access information visible proved challenging—city council welcome documents lacked accessibility guidance, disability office representatives were initially unresponsive, and obtaining a disability ID card involved confusing bureaucratic processes with multiple forms and addresses. The language barrier emerged as a fundamental blocker for interpersonal accessibility, as Germany’s lower digitalization meant many services required in-person visits where Zeynep could not easily communicate her access needs. After two months, some Turkish accessibility strategies stopped working while new German-specific solutions emerged, illustrating how accessibility is contextual, fluid, and constantly renegotiated rather than fixed.
Key findings
The paper reveals several concrete accessibility challenges unique to international relocation with a disability. Housing platform filters reduce accessibility to a binary wheelchair-focused category, failing to represent the diversity of access needs; the author suggests customizable filters listing specific features like elevators, handles, and counter heights. Language barriers compound accessibility challenges by preventing the informal social negotiations that disabled people use daily to solve access issues in their home countries. Disability-related bureaucratic processes differ significantly across countries, and information about these processes is fragmented, context-specific, and often invisible to newcomers. The research highlights how disabled people from non-Western, non-EU countries face additional vulnerability due to shared EU disability policies that assume familiarity with European systems. Digital accessibility maps and crowdsourced accessibility information for cities remain limited and not widely available, yet are critical for disabled people planning relocation. The author’s reliance on existing disabled communities in her home country for problem-solving strategies underscores how relocation severs these vital support networks. The paper calls for international online communities connecting disabled people on the move to share experience-based accessibility information across borders.
Relevance
This paper makes a unique contribution by framing accessibility as something that must be renegotiated when a person moves between different physical, cultural, social, and technical infrastructures. For accessibility practitioners, it highlights that access is not a fixed state but a continuous, context-dependent process. The implications are practical and multi-layered: housing platforms need granular, customizable accessibility filters rather than binary options; municipalities should provide accessible digital information about disability services for newcomers; academic institutions should budget for accessibility-related relocation costs; and the accessibility research community should support disabled researchers’ mobility. The autoethnographic methodology itself models how first-person disabled perspectives can generate insights unavailable through traditional research methods. A limitation is that the account represents one person’s experience, though the specificity is also its strength.
Tags: autoethnography · relocation · mobility disability · accessible housing · language barriers · disability policy · accessibility information · disabled expat