Adversarial Stakeholders

Individuals, institutions, or systems that disabled people depend on for access but that simultaneously pose threats of harm. Examples include healthcare providers who discriminate based on stigmatized identities, government agencies that condition benefits on compliance, or technology platforms that may surveil or exclude users. In accessibility research, the concept challenges the common assumption that all stakeholders in a disabled person's access ecosystem are benevolent, and calls for designing systems that account for the reality that essential service providers may also be sources of harm.