Collaborative Accessibility

In recent decades, great technological strides have been made toward enabling people who are blind to live independent, successful lives. However, there has been relatively little progress towards understanding the social, collaborative needs of this population, particularly in the domestic setting. We conducted semi-structured interviews in the homes of 10 pairs of close companions in which one partner was blind and one was not. We found that partners engaged in collaborative accessibility by taking active roles in co-creating an accessible environment. Due to their different visual abilities, however, partners sometimes encountered difficulties managing divergent needs and engaging in shared experiences. We describe outstanding challenges to creating accessible shared home spaces and outline new research and technology opportunities for supporting collaborative accessibility in the home.