Navigating Graduate School with a Disability
Dhruv Jain, Venkatesh Potluri, Ather Sharif · 2020 · Proceedings of the 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '20) · doi:10.1145/3373625.3416986
Summary
This paper presents a three-person autoethnography by computer science Ph.D. students at the University of Washington, each with a different disability: Dhruv Jain (hard of hearing, congenital bilateral sensorineural hearing loss), Venkatesh Potluri (congenitally blind with light perception in one eye), and Ather Sharif (quadriplegia from spinal cord injury, using an electric wheelchair with limited arm/hand control). Through retrospective journals and field notes collected over one to two years of graduate school, the authors document situations where their standard disability accommodations failed — what they term "mis-accommodations" — and the creative coping strategies they employed. The paper examines four interacting factors that shaped their disabled experience: self-image (internal conflicts around disability identity, feelings of guilt and inferiority when requesting accommodations, pressure to prove capability), relationships (power differentials with advisors and faculty affecting willingness to disclose needs, varying expectations from close vs. distant colleagues), technologies (misassumptions that technology removes all barriers, that technology works in all contexts, or that one accommodation works for everyone), and institutional infrastructure (ambiguity in who bears responsibility for access across departments, disability offices, and parent bodies). The authors use a trio-ethnographic approach, commenting on each other's accounts to establish reflexivity, criticality, reliability, and external validity across their diverse disability experiences.
Key findings
The paper reveals several critical tensions in the accommodation process. First, all three authors experienced significant emotional labor around disability disclosure — feelings of inferiority, guilt about "burdening" others, and pressure to prove themselves as capable, particularly as international students navigating both cultural adaptation and disability identity simultaneously. Second, the concept of "access intimacy" — having higher expectations of accessibility from close colleagues — created tension when those expectations were unmet, yet the power differential with advisors made requesting accommodations feel risky. Third, a single accommodation could simultaneously help one person and create barriers for another: a "talking pillow" protocol that gave Jain visual cues for conversation turn-taking was inaccessible to Potluri because he could not see the pillow being passed. Fourth, technology failures were unpredictable and context-dependent — software bugs could suddenly make a previously accessible tool unusable, and Potluri described the emotional toll of a screen reader becoming unresponsive during a deadline. The authors introduce the concept of "uncharted accommodations" — in-situ, ad hoc solutions for unpredictable accessibility needs — and propose four implementation strategies: proactive customization, effective collaboration, community participation, and repurposing existing technologies.
Relevance
This paper is essential reading for anyone involved in creating accessible educational or workplace environments. It moves beyond the typical framing of accommodations as administrative checkboxes to reveal the deeply personal, emotional, and social dimensions of navigating disability in a demanding professional setting. For accessibility practitioners, the findings challenge three common misassumptions: that providing an accommodation solves the access problem, that accommodations work consistently across all situations, and that what works for one disabled person works for all. The autoethnographic method itself is significant — as the first trio-ethnography in the accessibility community, it demonstrates how first-person disability narratives can generate insights that traditional user studies cannot capture, particularly around stigma, identity, and the emotional burden of self-advocacy. The four strategies for "uncharted accommodations" provide a practical framework for universities, employers, and technology designers to move beyond scheduled, planned accommodations toward more responsive, in-the-moment accessibility support.
Tags: education accessibility · disability identity · autoethnography · accommodation · STEM accessibility · higher education · disability disclosure · lived experience