Understanding How Accessibility Practices Impact Teamwork in Mixed-Ability Teams that Collaborate Virtually
Crescentia Jung, Kexin Cheng, Sharon Heung, Malte F. Jung, Shiri Azenkot · 2026 · Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26) · doi:10.1145/3772318.3790419
Summary
This CHI 2026 paper examines how accessibility practices shape teamwork in mixed-ability teams—teams composed of disabled and non-disabled members—who collaborate virtually. While prior research has documented individual access barriers and the accommodations used to address them, Jung and colleagues argue that accessibility practices also reshape the broader dynamics of teamwork itself: how people coordinate tasks, sustain rapport, negotiate responsibilities, and practice allyship. The authors situate the work at the intersection of two bodies of literature—teamwork research (framed around productivity, participation, and camaraderie) and accessibility research in mixed-ability virtual collaboration (which has explored access labor, interdependence, stigma, and allyship). They argue that the intersection is underexplored. Methodologically, the authors conducted 60-minute semi-structured interviews with 18 participants (12 disabled, 6 non-disabled) drawn from teams across education, technology, nonprofit, and research settings. Participants had a range of disabilities including blind/low vision, deaf/hard-of-hearing, physical disabilities, ADHD, autism, and chronic illness, and used platforms including Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and asynchronous tools like Slack and shared documents. Transcripts were analysed inductively using thematic analysis, with three researchers coding collaboratively and producing affinity diagrams. The paper reframes accessibility practices not merely as a means of including disabled workers but as a foundation that actively shapes team-wide productivity, rapport-building, and shared responsibility.
Key findings
Three main findings emerged. First, accessibility practices enhanced rapport, coordination, and productivity: treating accessibility as a collective concern (via shared documents, team-wide access surveys, and routine check-ins) normalised disability disclosure, reduced stigma, and built a shared understanding of how disability affected each person's work pace and style. Participants adopted concepts like "crip time" as shared frameworks for negotiating flexible deadlines. Second, accessibility practices also introduced emotional and interpersonal tensions. Inaccessible tools (e.g., Salesforce with a screen reader, non-accessible databases) shifted work onto non-disabled team members, creating uneven task distribution, resentment, and strained relationships. Participants struggled to balance empathy with accountability—accommodations without clear expectations sometimes led to missed deadlines, frustration, and disabled members feeling judged as unreliable. Third, allyship emerged as a learned teamwork skill rather than a fixed set of behaviours. Non-disabled participants described developing allyship through observation, feedback, and mistakes—learning to step back in meetings, ask before helping, and respect autonomy rather than assuming. Supportive team cultures with psychological safety were essential to this learning. Importantly, disabled team members actively shaped allyship by clarifying preferences, setting boundaries, and offering guidance, making allyship a co-constructed, relational practice.
Relevance
For accessibility practitioners, HR professionals, and team leads, this paper offers concrete, practice-ready guidance for making remote and hybrid mixed-ability teams function well. It pushes beyond the compliance framing of accommodations toward a teamwork framing: accessibility is infrastructure for productivity, not a side-channel for disabled staff. Practical takeaways include normalising shared access documents, establishing explicit norms around flexibility and accountability, openly redistributing work surfaced by inaccessible tools, and treating allyship as a skill developed through reflection rather than delivered through one-off training. Design opportunities identified—flexibility timers, reassignment flags, access check-in prompts, accessibility preference profiles—are directly actionable for teams building or procuring collaboration tools. Limitations include the skew toward disabled participants (12 of 18) and reliance on retrospective self-report; observational and longitudinal studies would strengthen the findings. The work is especially valuable for organisations moving permanently to virtual or hybrid work.
Tags: mixed-ability teams · virtual collaboration · remote work · teamwork · accessibility practices · allyship · access labor · workplace accessibility · qualitative research