Challenges and Considerations for Accessibility Research Across Cultures and Regions
Laleh Nourian, Yulia Goldenberg, Muhammad Adamu, Vikram Kamath Cannanure, Catherine Holloway, Neha Kumar, Katharina Reinecke, Garreth W. Tigwell · 2024 · Proceedings of the 26th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2024) · doi:10.1145/3663548.3688552
Summary
This workshop proposal addresses a critical blind spot in accessibility research: its overwhelming bias toward Western, Global North perspectives. Drawing on postcolonial and decolonial computing frameworks, the authors argue that despite the rapid expansion of accessibility research over the past two decades, very little focuses on accessibility issues within marginalized societies such as the Global South, non-Western regions, and Indigenous communities. This matters because the geopolitical, social, cultural, and infrastructural contexts of these regions differ significantly from the Global North where most accessibility research originates. For example, smartphone adoption in India is shaped by social and economic functions quite different from Western contexts, which has direct implications for how assistive technology should be designed and deployed. The workshop, held fully online during ASSETS 2024, brought together researchers and practitioners interested in cultural differences, Global South research, HCI for development (HCI4D), and postcolonial computing within the context of accessibility. The organizers represent a deliberately international group spanning institutions in the US, UK, Israel, and Germany, with several having lived experience in Global South countries. The workshop was structured in three stages: pre-workshop community building via Discord and a collaborative resource library, a four-hour synchronous workshop with breakout discussions on Miro boards, and post-workshop asynchronous engagement to accommodate global time zone differences.
Key findings
The workshop proposal identifies several key gaps and goals for the field. First, accessibility guidelines and standards developed primarily in Western contexts may conflict with designers' cultural preferences in non-Western regions, creating barriers to adoption that are poorly understood. Second, researchers working on Global South accessibility have few opportunities to learn from others' experiences, anticipate challenges, or develop collaborative strategies with regional marginalized communities due to the sparse literature. Third, factors such as cultural and social norms, geo-political dynamics, and local technology landscapes all significantly impact people's needs and preferences but remain under-studied in accessibility research. The workshop set three concrete goals: establishing a network for future cross-regional accessibility collaborations, identifying under-explored research areas at the intersection of accessibility and cross-regional perspectives, and developing guidelines for researchers unfamiliar with either accessibility or cross-regional research to work effectively at this intersection. The organizers planned to produce a white paper summarizing workshop outcomes, stored on the workshop website and institutional repositories.
Relevance
This workshop highlights a fundamental equity issue in accessibility: if accessibility research and standards are developed primarily by and for Western populations, they risk perpetuating the very marginalization they aim to address. For practitioners working in international contexts, the implication is that accessibility solutions cannot simply be exported from the Global North — they must be adapted to local cultural, social, and infrastructural realities. The concept of bidirectional interface design (for Arabic and Hebrew) illustrates how even basic UI conventions assume Western norms. The workshop's emphasis on building an international research community and shared resource library represents a practical step toward more globally inclusive accessibility practice. Organizations deploying accessible technology internationally should consider how cultural factors shape disability identity, technology adoption, and the effectiveness of accessibility interventions in different regions.
Tags: cross-cultural accessibility · Global South · postcolonial computing · decolonial computing · HCI4D · inclusive research · cross-regional studies · cultural differences