Access as solidarity

To cite this work: Soorenian, A. (2025). Access as solidarity. Disability Dialogues. Sheffield: iHuman, University of Sheffield. 

Armineh is a disability researcher with experience of working in DPO, public and HE sector. In her research work, Armineh has covered a range of areas related to Disabled people’s independent living, including, education, family relationships and housing. She is currently one of the Research Associates on Wellcome Anti-Ableist Research Cultures project, leading the Environment strand of the project, which focuses on Disabled staff’s recruitment and employment experiences in the University of Sheffield.  

A few months ago, I met with two other Research Associates in iHuman with the intention to form a space for writing. Following this initial meeting, we started to meet on a fortnightly basis. During the meetings, we shared and learned from our experiences of being in an ableist system, and then went away to write about our reflections in our own space, sometimes writing only a paragraph or two a day. Through recording and journaling our thoughts and discussions, we began to develop a rich dialogue. 

We are three individuals with different sets of impairments, backgrounds, research interests and experiences. It has been an insightful process to discuss and analyse theoretical and practical access issues at academic environments, including lack of physical access and audio/image descriptions, lack of support, and the provision of inaccessible information. Together we discussed that - theoretically speaking - access is a fluid, non-linear, non-binary state, and an intersectional issue affecting Disabled people’s abilities to participate in the social culture of an institution. 

 Yet, for me personally, coming together and building a beautiful and forgiving community of care, where I have been able to explore access in practice with others, in real life terms, while facing uncertainties has been the most empowering aspect of our collaboration. Positioning myself in a conscious and intentional space, with a commitment to the other Research Associates and to our individual writings in an inclusive and caring way has been a positive and uplifting experience. being fully present in our small group, validating and affirming each other’s accounts in our writings is something that has allowed me to listen to my broken and disjointed articulation so closely and respectfully, honouring my imperfect body-mind. Alongside the celebration of the new ways of being together, new patterns and rhythms of writing, thinking, moving, and holding space for each other has been significant in feeling the pain of the ableist trauma and its impact on my self-esteem. Having time to process our shared traumas and how we each respond, I learned that sometimes I internalise the systematic failures, sometimes I resist, and other times choose to respond creatively with love, this has been a radical practice, one which has made the process of writing so much more accessible and joyful for me.

In consciously choosing access intimacy as a care philosophy which is about the humility to respond to crip time, we were able to maintain a mutually supportive space that honours all aspects of our identities, while responding on a continuing basis to each others’ evolving needs in a safe and welcoming environment. We adjusted our writing practices to ensure we moved together, enabling each other to fully participate without being perceived as a burden or treated as distraction or disruption. We thoughtfully agreed on a timetable and ways of working that suited all our work commitments. For example, to meet my access needs, we decided to add our thoughts and comments to a word document, then share it between three of us as an attachment without using google docs or track changes, which are not compatible with my screen-reader. We chose the ‘collective rather than productive, repetitive rather than linear, reflective rather than forward-moving’ (Luciano, 2009) approach to our writing. In this way, I learned through reflection how access theories manifest themselves in our lives as three individuals with diverse needs and lived experiences. This access practice in writing has been invaluable and impactful in my own academic journey and has allowed me to explore its power and possibility of enacting interdependence. 

Luciano, D. (2009). Arranging Grief: Sacred Time and the Body in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: New York University Press.