"We Figure It Out Together": A Framework for Relational Communication in Disabled and Neurodivergent LGBTQIA+ Romantic Partnerships
Kirk Andrew Crawford, Foad Hamidi · 2026 · Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26) · doi:10.1145/3772318.3790635
Summary
Crawford and Hamidi investigate how disabled and neurodivergent LGBTQIA+ romantic partners collaboratively build and sustain communication practices over time, an area largely overlooked in HCI research that has tended to focus on single points in time or on specific impairments. Drawing on feminist care ethics, disability justice, queer-crip theory, and prior work on relational accessibility and interdependence, the authors conducted a three-month diary and co-design study with five LGBTQIA+ partnerships (plus one solo participant), totalling eleven participants with a wide range of disabilities and neurodivergent identities including autism, ADHD, Tourette's, cognitive difficulty, low vision, epilepsy, and CPTSD. Participants submitted over 500 diary entries via Google Forms (text, voice, images) and then joined 90-minute remote co-design sessions on FigJam structured around reviewing diary themes, critiquing existing communication tools (pebbling, social stories, TwIPS, communication boards), and speculating about future designs. Data was analysed using Braun and Clarke's reflexive thematic analysis with multiple rounds of member-checking. The paper argues that the everyday labour of these partnerships constitutes a 'relational infrastructure' — a communicative system of shared practices, adaptive routines, and negotiated meanings that partners co-create — and introduces the Relational Access Framework for Communication (RAF-Comm) as a generative model for understanding and designing for these partnerships.
Key findings
Three themes emerged. First, partners mediate sensitive communication with technology in complex ways: Partnership E co-created visual flowcharts and 'emotional state dials' to bridge cognitive differences, and one partner used ChatGPT as a 'neutral third party' to rehearse difficult conversations — but this scaffolding felt alienating to the other partner, who described having to communicate in a 'robotic' way that was 'destroying [her] ability to be [herself].' Second, partners negotiate access around the frictions of everyday tools: asynchronous apps like Cozy Couples created breathing room but also ambiguity; SMS/iMessage and Android/iPhone FaceTime incompatibilities forced Partnership C to pause hard conversations until meeting in person; voice notes meant as an accommodation for a low-vision partner were instead read via flawed automated transcripts. Third, partners co-create joy through shared rituals — custom iMessage stickers, inside jokes like 'uwu' as a reassurance cue, and an accessible spice wheel for a low-vision partner — that function as relationship maintenance behaviours. A central insight is that technology's usefulness is conditional on mutual willingness to engage; without it, no tool compensates for the absent relational labour, and non-use can itself be a valid, relationship-preserving choice.
Relevance
This paper pushes accessibility practice beyond individual-user design toward relationship-level design. The RAF-Comm's four components — Identifying and Disclosing Intersecting Identities, Co-Creating Communication Practices, Adapting to Shifting Capacities and Contexts, and Negotiating Conditional Use of Technology — give practitioners a vocabulary for access work that is ongoing, co-authored, and sometimes best served by setting tools aside. Four design principles follow: design for renegotiation over time, support energy- and consent-aware communication (including non-use), design for safeguards and mutual consent (especially around AI mediation), and scaffold co-created cues rather than imposing one-size-fits-all solutions. The authors note limitations: the sample skewed white, young, and U.S.-based, excluding the 'triple jeopardy' intersections Black LGBTQIA+ partners navigate, and focused only on romantic dyads rather than broader chosen-family networks.
Tags: cognitive accessibility · neurodiversity · LGBTQIA+ · disability · intersectionality · interdependence · co-design · relational accessibility · AI · romantic relationships · assistive technology · diary study