Alignment Work for Urban Accessibility: A Study of How Wheelchair Users Travel in Urban Spaces

Abstract

Mobility is the key for people with disabilities to have full participation in life. To support their mobility, previous work primarily focused on accessibility as an attribute of the external environment to be evaluated, labeled, visualized, and improved. Relatively less work has looked at how people with disabilities go out and move around in practice and work to achieve mobility. This paper presents a qualitative study of 14 wheelchair users' travel practices in everyday life in China, highlighting urban accessibility as alignment work -- the use of an awareness of the conditions along the journey to continuously align and re-align various resources to ensure accessibility and mobility across contexts and moments. By highlighting alignment work, we present another side of the story of urban accessibility, and broaden design considerations to support mobility for wheelchair users.