Access Is Not Enough: Toward Developmental Flourishing
Yuanyang (YY) Teng, Darren Gergle · 2026 · Extended Abstracts of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '26) · doi:10.1145/3772363.3798552
Summary
Teng and Gergle (Northwestern University) present an opinion paper arguing that the dominant 'access' framing in accessibility research - measuring success through task completion and outcome equivalence within visual-first activities - is fundamentally insufficient. They contend it bypasses the exploratory, iterative, and meaning-making processes through which blind and low-vision (BLV) individuals develop authentic engagement with activities. Drawing on Amartya Sen's Capabilities Approach (the distinction between functionings - achieved outcomes - and capabilities - genuine freedoms to engage), positive-design literature on subjective well-being, and critical disability scholarship, they propose reframing accessibility around 'developmental flourishing.' Under this frame, assistive technologies are not endpoints that grant outcome parity with sighted users but means through which BLV people expand capabilities to explore, create, make sense of experiences, and continually redefine engagement. The paper grounds this argument in three example domains, each pulling out a system-level paradigm shift: visual creativity (AltCanvas, IncluSim, Tactile Heatmaps, Surveyor) motivates 'interface as cognitive representation' - a What-You-Perceive-Is-What-You-Get alternative to WYSIWYG that aligns with BLV serial/grid-based spatial cognition rather than sighted parallel visual processing; sensory substitution (Seeing with the Hands, ProjectTapTap, Hapstick-Figure) motivates 'embodiment as communication instruments' rather than as compensation for missing senses; and technology adaptation (ProgramAlly, DIY assistive technology) motivates 'evolving-through-use systems' that treat BLV users as domain experts engaged in long-term strategy building, with end-user programming as the unit of computation.
Key findings
This is a position/opinion paper, so the 'findings' are conceptual contributions rather than empirical results. Three concrete paradigm shifts are distilled. First: interfaces should be designed as structured cognitive representations matched to BLV users' serial, parts-to-whole spatial processing - the authors draw on neuroscience evidence of serial vs parallel processing in print and braille reading and on grid-based systems (AltCanvas's tile view, IncluSim's tactile circuit grid, Engel et al.'s tactile heatmaps) to show that abandoning WYSIWYG visual resemblance often produces richer engagement than retrofitting screen readers onto visual-first interfaces. Second: sensory substitution should be reconceived not as one-to-one channel replacement but as embodied communication instruments, citing Seeing with the Hands (showing that hand-mounted vs eye-mounted cameras give qualitatively different - and complementary - spatial information) and ProjectTapTap (showing that vibrotactile signals between sighted teachers and BLV music students accumulate negotiated meaning over time rather than carrying fixed semantics). Third: assistive technology should be designed as an evolving-through-use platform for end-user programming, with scenario-specific user-defined logic as the unit of computation rather than the app or model. The discussion acknowledges that access and flourishing are complementary, not substitutes - outcomes-focused access remains necessary in many situations - and flags open challenges: whose process to optimize for, mixed-ability collaboration grounding, and the technical challenge of supporting diverse perceptual and cognitive processes within architectures optimized for uniform interaction flows.
Relevance
For accessibility researchers and assistive-technology designers, this is a useful theoretical lens to apply to roadmap and evaluation decisions. The critique that screen readers, descriptive text, and visual-AI models are 'band-aids' on visual-first systems is sharp and has practical bite: it suggests that current AI-generated audio description, alt text, and scene description tools may be optimizing the wrong objective when the activity itself (creating art, learning music, programming, navigating uncertain everyday tasks) could be redesigned around BLV cognitive and embodied strategies. Practitioners can use the three paradigm shifts as evaluative questions: does this interface align with how the user actually perceives and reasons rather than mimicking visual form; does it treat sensory channels as expressive instruments rather than as deficits to substitute; and does it support long-term user-driven adaptation rather than freezing functionality at design time? Caveats: the paper is a position piece without empirical evaluation, the analyzed examples are a small convenience sample, and the operational distinction between access and flourishing in practice (which the authors acknowledge) makes the framework harder to apply as a checklist than as a stance.
Tags: accessibility theory · assistive technology · blind and low vision · flourishing · disability studies · critical accessibility