“Nothing about us without us.” When it comes to conversations on disability within HCI, few mottos seem to do more to honor the urgency for access. Long embraced within disability activism, the phrase captures something endemic to the field: that what it means to be innovative is tied up with what it means to be visible.Critical disabilities studies — a body of literature spanning law, economics, anthropology, history (among other fields) — has paid particular attention to this visibility. Since at least its introduction to HCI by Jenn Mankoff, Gillian R. Hayes, and Devva Kasnitz in 2011, this work has highlighted entrenched ableism within our range of design activities, from exporting a PDF file to the development of assistive technology. Amplified within concurrent activist movements, these critical perspectives call for confronting ingrained assumptions of designers, technologists, and researchers as non-disabled and the need for centering the first-hand experiences of people with disabilities within technology development. Acknowledging a wider politics of exclusion, they challenge a design process premised on the important and sometimes overlapping dynamics of ableism with whiteness, male-ness, cis-genderedness, and heterosexuality, among other axes of difference.Contributions in this current issue take us through these varied challenges to make an important and even hopeful proposition. They suggest that technological worlds infused with inequity still hold onto the potential for change. To create the conditions for enacting change, they show us the range of learning and unlearning needed. Recognizing the burden of asking people with disabilities to participate in studies (Kim Marriott). Gathering a diversity of audio-visual learning materials for class syllabi to allow for greater access to critical disability perspectives (Laura Forlano). Pushing against an ideology ofmonolingualism(Manuel Pérez-Quiñonesand Consuelo Carr Salas).Making the aging body integral to the designoftechnology for lived experience (Britta Schulte and Kellie Morrisey). Using intersectional frameworks to center those marginalized within design (Yolanda Rankin, Quincy Brown, Neha Kumar). And asking who is being designed for, by whom, and how? (Elizabeth Churchill). In these reflections and inquiries, we learn of the need to prioritize access in all aspects of design. Core to this discussion is the introduction of Crip HCI. Where some research strives to highlight ability rather than disability (arguing against a deficiency model), Rua Williams and interlocutors Tiago Guerreiro, Arne Maibaum, and Mahender Mandala speak to the importance of not only recognizing disability, but also grapplingwith the trouble within. With the term Crip, they emphasize the plurality of approaches to making and sharing knowledge among disabled people. These knowledge practices work to refuse status quo design narratives but also forge new and different realities — what Williams calls “a new Crip-affirming future.”
