Anticipate and Adjust: Cultivating Access in Human-Centered Methods
Kelly Mack, Emma McDonnell, Venkatesh Potluri, Maggie Xu, Jailyn Zabala, Jeffrey Bigham, Jennifer Mankoff, Cynthia Bennett · 2022 · CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems · doi:10.1145/3491102.3501882
Summary
This paper investigates how accessibility experts make human-centered research methods accessible for both disabled participants and disabled facilitators. Through 17 interviews with US and Canadian accessibility experts (13 researchers and 4 community organizers, 14 of whom identified as disabled), the authors examine the full research pipeline from method selection through data analysis and writing. The study is grounded in two disability studies concepts: crip time, which recognizes that disabled people have different relationships with time and productivity expectations, and interdependence, which frames access as occurring within relationships where everyone is valued and has things to offer. Interviewees had a median of 5 years of experience and worked across diverse methods including interviews, workshops, fabrication activities, usability studies, and surveys. The paper identifies a guiding principle of "anticipating with adjustments" — doing thorough homework to anticipate access needs while maintaining flexibility to adapt when unexpected barriers arise. Access considerations span four key dimensions: communication, materials, space, and time, each of which must be addressed at every stage of the research process.
Key findings
Accessibility in research is not a checklist but a continuous, labor-intensive process spanning every phase from method selection to reflection. Interviewees adapted methods rather than avoiding them — a blind researcher ran diary studies using text and voice memos; another restructured experiments from within-subjects to between-subjects to reduce participant fatigue. Recruitment language significantly impacted who participated: one researcher found her initial language attracted only privileged participants until she explicitly invited queer participants, participants of color, and those with multiple disabilities. Disabled researchers brought unique "access intimacy" — embodied knowledge from lived experience that gave their teams a higher baseline for anticipating participant needs, but this also created tensions around when to prioritize their own access needs versus participants's. "Default" tools (NVivo, Figma, Miro) were often inaccessible to screen reader users, forcing disabled researchers to develop workarounds like spreadsheet-based coding systems. Access needs sometimes conflicted — one Deaf researcher's need for voicing restrictions in the lab space conflicted with hearing participants' communication preferences. Power dynamics pervaded access work: disabled interviewees framed access needs as "preferences" to avoid stigma in unsupportive environments, and junior team members bore disproportionate access labor.
Relevance
This paper is essential reading for any researcher conducting studies with disabled participants or working on mixed-ability teams. Its practical contributions are immediately actionable: the four-dimension framework (communication, materials, space, time) provides a structured way to plan accessible research at every stage, and the included workflow diagram offers a concrete planning tool. For accessibility practitioners and organizations, the paper's most important message is that conducting accessible research and conducting accessibility research are not the same thing — all researchers, regardless of their focus area, should make their methods accessible. The finding that popular research tools are systematically inaccessible to disabled researchers highlights an infrastructure problem that tool developers and institutions must address. The concept of access labor being invisible and undervalued in academia parallels similar dynamics in industry, where the work of making products accessible is often unrecognized and under-resourced.
Tags: research methods · accessibility · disability · participatory design · user research · inclusive research · access labor · crip time · interdependence · mixed-ability teams