Work in Progress: Re-imagining Workplace Accessibility in Diverse Organizational Contexts

Overview

Workplace accessibility is not only a technical challenge, but also an organizational, cultural, and structural one. Across sectors and professions, disabled workers continue to navigate technologies, policies, norms, and institutional expectations that shape access and participation at work.

This workshop aims to bring together researchers, practitioners, and disabled workers, to examine workplace accessibility across diverse contexts and career stages. Through collaborative discussion, journey mapping, and speculative storytelling activities, participants will critically reflect on how assumptions about productivity, professionalism, and ability shape workplace experiences today, while imagining more accessible futures of work.

We welcome participants from a broad range of backgrounds, including:

• Researchers working on accessibility, work, disability, organizational studies, CSCW, or HCI

• Practitioners involved in designing, deploying, or supporting workplace technologies and accessibility practices

• Disabled workers, advocates, and community organizers with lived experience navigating accessibility at work

We especially encourage participation from people with disabilities across different career stages, sectors, and geographic regions.

Call for Participation

We invite 20–25 participants from research, practice, advocacy, and disabled communities to engage in small-group collaboration and cross-context discussion aimed at reflecting on similarities and differences in workplace accessibility.

Workshop Themes

The following themes, derived from the Accessibility Paradox, serve as preliminary lenses for examining workplace accessibility. We anticipate that workshop participants will expand, challenge, and refine these themes by mapping them onto their own work contexts and lived experiences.

• Digital and Physical Work Infrastructure
  Organizations consist of a constellation of digital and physical infrastructure that shape everyday tasks–from communication platforms and scheduling systems to physical workspaces, equipment, and administrative portals–that may not be accessible to disabled workers. Participants are invited to reflect on technical access barriers at multiple points of participation--hiring, onboarding, task execution, professional development, and evaluation--and the impacts it has on the disabled workers.

• Accommodation Processes and Policies
  Organizations rely on a range of formal and informal processes to support disabled employees in participating effectively at work. Participants are invited to draw from experiences related to how access needs are requested, interpreted, negotiated, and implemented across different workplace contexts.

• Ability Assumptions
  Workplaces are often shaped by deeply embedded assumptions about ability, productivity, communication, and professionalism. Participants are invited to examine how these norms surface in hiring practices, performance expectations, workplace interactions, and disclosure decisions, as well as the emotional, relational, and access labor disabled workers may undertake to navigate environments not designed with them in mind.

• Competing Organizational Priorities
  Organizations operate within broader institutional pressures such as productivity metrics, budget constraints, strategic goals, compliance requirements, and the adoption of emerging technologies. Participants are invited to explore how these competing priorities shape organizational commitments to accessibility and inclusion, including their influence on policy development, resource allocation, leadership accountability, and long-term accessibility efforts.

Submission Details

To participate, please submit a 2–4 page position paper describing:

• Your organizational context or area of interest (e.g., healthcare, education, government, nonprofit, industry, academia)

• Relevant experiences, observations, research findings, or reflections related to workplace accessibility

Participants will be selected through a light review process conducted by the organizers, who will evaluate submissions based on their relevance to the workshop theme, overall quality, and the diversity of perspectives they contribute.

Submission Deadline: August 15, 2026

Workshop Agenda

Pre-workshop

Participants will be invited to an optional online session one week prior to the workshop. This session is intended to support accessibility and participation by providing space for participants to familiarize themselves with one another, the workshop activities, and ask questions in advance of the on-site gathering.

Additionally, an asynchronous communication channel will be established during this period to support ongoing sharing, discussion, community building, and engagement across different time zones and participation needs.

On the day of the workshop 

• 8:30–9:00 am — Orientation

• 9:00–9:15 am — Breakout into groups and familiarize with group members

• 9:15–9:30 am — Short Break

• 9:30–10:30 am — Collaborative Journey Mapping

• 10:30–11:00 am — Coffee Break

• 11:00 am–12:00 pm — Speculative Storytelling

• 12:00–12:15 pm — Short Break

• 12:15–1:00 pm — Group Share

• 1:00–3:00 pm — Lunch 

• 3:00–4:00 pm — Open Discussion and Networking (Optional)

Note: The workshop schedule is designed to accommodate remote participants who might be joining from multiple time zones.

Organizers