The sociologist David Wästerfors has studied what people with various disabilities do to manage troubles with accessibility. His findings show how they employ other people’s actions and support, how they develop routines and how they make deals with crucial actors. “They also observe, imitate and follow others’ actions, to pick out precisely those ways that suit their needs,” notes Wästerfors.
The study found considerable emotion work and frustration among people with disabilities who are blocked, excluded or delayed due to lack of accessibility, which sometimes motivates them to engage politically.
“City planners may continue to eliminate thresholds, install new ramps, and erect paths for people with visual impairments, but if they do not also consider the running folk methods, for example, the enlistment of others, they will miss the significance of employing staff to assist at railway stations, flight terminals, shopping malls, self-scanning registers, and obstructing elevators, etc.” concludes Wästerfors. To carefully observe people’s mundane methods similarly reminds us of the great humanistic value in publicly funded personal assistance.
The study is part of the project “Accessibility and its resistance”, funded by the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare (FORTE), and conducted in cooperation with Kristofer Hansson and Hanna Egard at Malmö University, Sweden.
Read David Wästerfors’s article “Required to be creative. Everyday ways for dealing with inaccessibility”, published in Disability & Society.
David Wästerfors’s personal page at the Department of Sociology
