Expanding Norms, Negotiating Bodies: How Artists with Disabilities Perceive and Use Creative Tools
Miriam Brody, Izabella Rodrigues, Jane L. E, Jingyi Li · 2025 · ASSETS '25: Proceedings of the 27th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility · doi:10.1145/3663547.3746331
Summary
This qualitative study explores how 12 artists with disabilities use, reject, or modify tools in their creative practice, applying a crip technoscience lens to inform the design of future creativity support tools (CSTs). The artists spanned a wide range of disabilities (mobility, blindness, deafness, neurodivergence, chronic illness) and artistic mediums (photography, theater, glass art, music, painting, multimedia installation, writing). Through semi-structured interviews averaging 90 minutes, the researchers investigated three questions: how artists modify tools, how disability influences artistic processes, and how tools support or prevent access. The paper adopts an expansive definition of tools that includes not just traditional art implements but mobility aids, human assistants, community networks, body preparation routines, and even flexibility in scheduling — all of which participants described as integral to their creative practice. The research team included researchers with disabilities and researchers who are artists, informing their positionality in interpreting the data. Through reflexive thematic analysis, six themes emerged around the interconnected relationships between tools, bodies, artistic identity, and systemic access barriers.
Key findings
The study produced several counterintuitive findings that challenge conventional CST design assumptions. First, artists viewed tools as interdependent relations rather than isolated instruments — wheelchairs, human assistants, shower chairs, and community support networks were considered creative tools as fundamental as cameras or paintbrushes. Second, participants almost universally rejected the notion of "adapting" their tools for their disabilities, instead describing modifications as tinkering or hacking rooted in crip maker traditions. However, they did "misuse" tools for artistic intent — a blind photographer chose a scanner over a camera to represent his impaired vision, a deaf artist distorted captions to comment on hearing aid limitations, and a poet used broken paintbrush handles to pry open paint lids. Third, disability was framed as an embodied epistemology and creative constraint rather than a limitation — artists described their bodies as active collaborators in the creative process, with a wheelchair user's seated vantage point becoming a distinctive visual signature rather than a restriction. Fourth, artists's primary frustrations were systemic rather than tool-related: lack of financial support, inaccessible artistic spaces, and the invisible costs of "showing up" (transportation, energy, physical preparation). Participants emphasized they would rather have political and financial support than new accessible tools.
Relevance
This paper offers a fundamentally different perspective on accessibility and tool design that challenges technosolutionist approaches common in HCI research. Rather than asking how to make tools more accessible, the authors ask whether new tools are even needed, and suggest that CST researchers should prioritize recognizing and supporting the creative innovations disabled artists are already making. The concept of interdependence — where tools, people, spaces, and systems form networks that enable creative practice — expands how we think about accessibility beyond individual tool features. For practitioners, the key takeaway is that designing for disabled users requires understanding their complete ecology of practice, not just the moments of direct tool interaction. The paper's reframing of CST design principles (Table 2) provides concrete research questions that push the field toward more inclusive, body-aware, and systemically conscious tool design. The emphasis on financial support and institutional access as primary barriers — rather than tool features — is a critical reminder that accessibility often requires systemic change, not just better technology.
Tags: disability arts · crip technoscience · creativity support tools · embodiment · interdependence · disability studies