Experiencing Access with Interactive Technologies

How is access experienced in interaction with modern technologies?

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) has a tradition of asking questions around functionality in the context of assistive and accessible technologies.

However, the additional aspects of lived experiences with disabilities are often secondary to the questions and interests driven by non-disabled researchers.

This approach risks producing artefacts that might be functionally accessible, but are deemed as undesirable, unwanted or even harmful by disabled communities themselves.

With an increased move towards digitising aspects of our everyday lives, there is an urgent need to understand the fundamentals of how access can be conceptualised, implemented and flexible to situated engagements.

ACCESSTECH investigates the deeper theories behind access as a component affecting interaction with technologies for disabled people through Participatory Research through Design.

Drawing on the PI's outstanding track record in critical analysis and participatory design practices within HCI (including 14 award-winning papers), we approach experiences of access along four paths of inquiry: 1) We identify the needed research and design parameters enabling us to produce knowledges about access-enabling technologies. 2) We establish which methods are required to design and develop critical technologies that are rooted in disability cultures as well as accepted and desired by disabled people. 3) We explore a range of different technologies to understand how they afford different kinds of access experiences. 4) We conceptualise and articulate access experiences as a distinct aspect shaping the interactive characteristics of modern technologies on a theoretical level.

Each of these paths informs disability centred practices and theories in HCI, though, collectively, ACCESSTECH represents a fundamental paradigm shift in the ways we encounter disabilities and technologies.