Relational Accessibility

An approach to accessibility that treats access as something co-constructed between people in everyday life, rather than a property of an individual user, tool, or environment. Relational accessibility recognises that communication, care, and adaptation are ongoing practices shared among partners, friends, or families — especially in disabled, neurodivergent, and queer contexts — and that accessibility must be continually negotiated as capacities, moods, and situations change. It shifts design attention from the single user toward the relationship itself as the unit of access-making.