Who is Considered Disabled? 

Invisible or hidden disabilities refer to disabilities and illnesses that are not obviously apparent, like let us say the way a wheelchair user or someone with a limb difference might be. Many disabilities are hidden disabilities. Think of neurodivergence; how do you know when someone is dyspraxic or autistic, or illnesses like fibromyalgia or lupus disease? How do we know if someone has a temporary disabling condition like healing after an operation or severe infection? When planning and executing access measures we must “think beyond the wheelchair.” A venue which has a ramp and a wheelchair-accessible toilet is not magically “100% accessible.”

Consider the different layers and scopes of disability so that we include those disabled groups which are oftentimes excluded from even calling themselves disabled. Those who are not yet disabled, as American disability rights activist Judith Heumann referred to non-disabled people, can start developing a sense of by implementing access before they join us. 

What to Remember:

Disability is Not Always Visible
Many disabled people have hidden, fluctuating, or temporary conditions, making it essential to think beyond visible impairments. 

Accessibility Goes Beyond Physical Access 
Ramps and accessible toilets are important, but true inclusion requires addressing a wide range of sensory, cognitive, communication, and health-related access needs. 

Design for Everyone Before Barriers Arise
Embedding accessibility from the outset benefits disabled people now and supports those who may become disabled or experience changing access needs in the future.

The Idea of the Universal

Reflective Questions:

-What do we mean when we say universal?
-What is the universal referring to?
-How do we feel when we encounter the word?

“What is the universal? I’m having a hard time connecting it with everything that my body feels, which doesn’t fit into universal narratives. It’s as if there is a separating wall that blocks the entrance into the everything.”

-TOD member

“…I will disappear before having found a convincing answer to this question: what’s the Absolute? At the end we ended up deciding that the Absolute is a misnomer. We fell into facts, such as the fact of being hungry, the fact that the atom bomb is being constantly improved…to put it simply, we’re suffucating”

-Etel Adnan, ‘Shifting the Silence’, 2022

“The important thing to ask ourselves is; what kind of question is this concept able to help us ask? How does it further or hinder the inclusion and liberation of disabled people? Does it help shift ableist attitudes in design?”

-TOD member

Universal Design (and its critique)

Universal design is an approach to creating environments, products, and services that can be used by as many people as possible, regardless of age, disability, or background. Developed by architect and wheelchair user Ronald Mace in the 1980s, it aimed to remove barriers that prevented disabled people from participating fully in society. Mace’s seven principles of universal design, later expanded by architects Edward Steinfeld and Jordana Maisel, have had a major influence on how we think about accessibility, inclusion, and designing for human diversity. At the same time, many disability scholars and activists have criticised universal design for presenting accessibility as a technical design problem rather than a political one. Designing for “everyone” can erase the reality that disabled people have different, and sometimes conflicting, access needs, while leaving the systems that produce exclusion untouched. A ramp, accessible website, or inclusive programme means little if people lack adequate income, personal assistance, housing, healthcare or has no citizenship or freedom to move outside of the refugee system. Without challenging these wider social and political conditions, universal design risks becoming a way of managing exclusion rather than transforming it. 

What to Remember:

Universal Design Promotes Inclusion 
It aims to create environments, products, and services that are accessible and usable by the widest possible range of people. 

Accessibility is Also Political
Removing physical or digital barriers alone is not enough if the wider systems that produce exclusion remain unchanged. 

One Solution Does Not Fit All
Disabled people have diverse and sometimes conflicting access needs, requiring ongoing dialogue, flexibility, and shared decision-making rather than universal solutions.

Who is in Charge?

Recognising that every institution is shaped by hierarchies is often the first step towards trying to change institutional power. Decisions about funding, programming, partnerships, hiring, access, and whose knowledge is valued are never neutral. They often reflect wider systems of power that exclude disabled people and other marginalised communities, even when inclusion is part of an institution’s stated values, policies, or public programmes. Becoming aware of these structures means asking difficult questions about who is invited in, who is expected to adapt, who makes decisions, and who is missing altogether. It also requires recognising how established ways of working can unintentionally reinforce exclusion. By examining their own practices with openness, reflection, and accountability, institutions can begin to shift from offering access as an afterthought to sharing power more meaningfully. This creates more equitable ways of working, strengthens collaboration, broadens participation, and supports environments where a wider range of people, experiences, and forms of knowledge can genuinely shape institutional practice.

“Going into fight mode. A stereotypical middle-aged, non-disabled, white cis man. Even in flat organizations, feeling a hierarchy. Being outside of the norm in a group and not being treated in the same way, even when they say you are. Actions not matching words or promises. Immigrants and disabled people have to change themselves just to get in the door.”

-TOD member

“What is the problem? Making hierarchies explicit. The less you think hierarchies are present, the more likely are exclusions, despite ideas like “family”, “horizontal”…”

-TOD member

What to Remember:

Recognise Institutional Power
Hierarchies influence decisions about funding, programming, hiring, and access, shaping who is included and whose knowledge is valued. 

Reflect on Exclusion
Meaningful change begins by questioning who participates, who makes decisions, who is expected to adapt, and who remains excluded. 

Share Power, Not Just Access 
Sustainable inclusion requires embedding equity, accountability, and shared decision-making into everyday institutional practice, rather than treating access as an afterthought. 

Questions for Mapping Institutional Hierarchies

Here you will find a list of questions, that can be used to map institutional hierarchies. If you believe that you do not have any hierarchies at your art institution, it might be a good indicator that you could be dealing with quite a lot:

Structure and Decision-Making
-Who makes decisions, and about what?
-How are decisions communicated across the institution?
-Who can approve exceptions, accommodations, or changes? 

Roles and Responsibilities
-What are the key roles and responsibilities within the institution?
-Who is responsible for accessibility, care, and inclusion
-Who is accountable when commitments are not fulfilled?

Resources and Access
-Who controls budgets and resources?
-How are accessibility-related resources allocated?
-Who can request additional support when needs arise?

Communication and Accountability
-How can concerns, feedback, or access needs be raised?
-How are issues addressed and followed up on?
-What mechanisms exist for accountability?

Informal Power
-Who influences decisions beyond their formal role?
-Whose voices are heard, and whose are overlooked?
-Who acts as gatekeepers to information, resources, or opportunities?

Accessibility and Inclusion
-When and how are accessibility considerations integrated into planning?
-Who is involved in shaping accessibility policies and practices?
-How does the institution ensure that representation leads to meaningful influence?

Change and Adaptation
-Who can propose changes?
-How are barriers identified and addressed?
-What enables or prevents institutional change?

Processed

Anna Walther & Anne Thomasen in Conversation

Anne: In ‘Processed’ (2024), you have taken art-theoretical texts and rolled them into small paper balls. What was your intention behind this action?

Anna: For me, the work is about my relationship to the texts and theories that surround the art world. I often experience art-theoretical language as being granted a particular authority, while at the same time it can feel inaccessible and alienating. By rolling the texts into balls, I process them physically rather than intellectually. It is both a gesture of resistance and an attempt to make them my own. The texts become objects that I can engage with on my own terms. The work also expresses a grief over not being able to access academic texts about art and text-based art. There is a deep sense of loss in feeling unable to fully participate in such a significant part of the art world and its broader landscape. I wish, for example, that this knowledge could coexist in shorter, more accessible, easy-read formats. I feel alienated from theories that could deepen my knowledge and help me feel more confident participating in conversations and debates. I also feel distanced from the practices of my colleagues and from art that relies heavily on text. There is a particular grief in feeling that my intellectual limitations restrict my ability to develop as an artist and to make better, more informed work.

Image description: The image shows a photograph of the sculpture ‘Processed’. It is a transparent circular dish mounted on a white wall. Inside the dish, there is a pile of small, white, granular or pebble-like objects made of printed paper. The print suggests that the material is densely filled with writing, but the text is unreadable to the viewer of the sculpture.

Anne: Could you elaborate on how the work relates to questions of institutional accessibility? 

Anna: The work stems from my own experiences of encountering barriers within and around academic institutions. Access to knowledge is not only a matter of interest, but also of time, mobility, finances, and familiarity with certain cultural codes. I have been interested in how some forms of knowledge appear open and universal, yet in practice can be difficult to access. The crumpled texts reflect that ambivalence: the desire to approach theory alongside the experience of feeling distant from it. 

Anne: What does Processed investigate in the relationship between art theory, the art academy, and your own artistic practice? 

Anna: I am interested in the tension between the institutional expectations of how art should be understood and communicated, and the experiences that I myself bring into my practice. My works do not necessarily emerge from a theoretical model, but through materials, actions, and personal experiences. In Processed, I explore what happens when art theory encounters these other forms of knowledge. The work is not a rejection of theory, but an attempt to negotiate its place within my own artistic process and to question which voices and forms of understanding are granted authority in the art world.

-Personal contribution by Anna Walther

Theory vs Practice

Most people who have encountered change work in practice, or initiated it, know that the challenges lie in the implementation. It is often easier to identify problems, discuss ideas, and develop conceptual frameworks than to translate those insights into lasting changes in everyday practice. The movement from theory to practice requires more than engaging with an area as a theme or adopting a new vocabulary. It asks us to examine how ideas are reflected in the structures, habits, and decision-making processes that shape our organisations. It means allowing these issues to affect how we work, collaborate, distribute resources, and create access. This transition is rarely straightforward. Change often unfolds through many small adjustments, negotiations, and experiments rather than a single transformative gesture. Going from theory to practice requires a willingness to engage with uncertainty, question established ways of working and recognise that learning is ongoing. The question is not only what we know or believe, but how that knowledge is embodied in practice.

Reflective Questions:

-How can we work our way from theory to practice?
-How do we remain attentive to the gap between what we say and what we do?

-How do we create conditions where ideas can move beyond statements of intent and become part of the lived reality of an institution?
-How are our values enacted in the world?
-Which part of ourselves are we making this decision with?   

What to Remember:

Theory in Practice
Lasting change depends on embedding ideas into everyday structures, decision-making, and ways of working. 

Change is Gradual
Meaningful transformation usually happens through small adjustments and continuous negotiation rather than a single breakthrough.

Practice Creates Knowledge
Applying theory is an ongoing learning process where knowledge is continually tested, challenged, and reshaped through action.

Support Structures

Adequate disability support rarely comes in a one-size-fits-all format. Instead, people need different kinds of support at different times in their lives, depending on their circumstances, environments, and individual access needs. When thoughtful, flexible, and well-developed structures are in place, disabled people have greater freedom to participate in work, education, relationships, community life, and culture on their own terms. Art institutions can play an important role in contributing to this change. They can support disability justice by treating access as an ongoing shared responsibility, working closely with disabled communities, and paying disabled artists and art workers fairly. They can also use their influence and power to challenge the social, economic, and political conditions that continue to exclude and marginalise disabled people, while creating more equitable and sustainable spaces for participation. Support structures exist in a variety of ways and scales, many of which are explored throughout this tool. They should be seen as different ingredients or elements that evolve continuously. 

“Everything that is perceived is pre-structured by the body’s structure before we become aware of it. If the body’s structure determines structure of perception, then we must not imagine the ideal body, but rather consider the body in its individual reality.”

-Lilian Korner, ‘Aesthetics of Blind Tactile Sensations’, 2024

What to Remember:

Support Must Be Flexible 
Disabled people have diverse and changing access needs that require adaptable structures.

Access is Shared
Institutions can advance disability justice through collaboration, fair practice, and ongoing commitment. 

Institutions can Create Change
Art organisations can challenge exclusion and build more equitable spaces for participation.

Crip Time

Crip time is a concept that grew out of disability communities. It changes how we think about time in relation to disability. On a practical level, it recognises that disabled people often need more time. To get somewhere. To complete a task. This can be because of speed, reliance on others, equipment, or ableist barriers in the built environment. It is running late. But crip time means more than giving or assuming the need for extra time. Crip time is a reorientation of time itself. It means designing events, conversations, and expectations around the fact that people move, arrive, and process language differently, instead of trying to make disabled people fit into standard ways of doing these things. The lived experience of crip time is also a knowledge making position. Because knowledge itself is time-based. Crip time positions disability not as a topic to be explained by other fields, but a source of its own logic, theory, and insight. 

“…rather than bend disabled bodies and minds to meet the clock, crip time bends the clock to meet disabled bodies and minds.”

-Alison Kafer, ‘Feminist, Queer, Crip’, 2013

What to Remember:

Crip Time Rethinks Time
It recognises that disabled people may experience, move through, and use time differently, challenging standards of speed and productivity.

Design Around Different Rhythms 
Inclusive practice means creating flexible schedules, events, and communication that adapt to diverse ways of moving, arriving, and processing information. 

Disability Generates Knowledge
Crip time is not only an accommodation but a different way of understanding the world, positioning disability as a source of insight, theory, and new ways of organising practice. 

10 Practical Ideas for Designing Meetings in Crip Time

1) Share the programme and any reading material in advance. Assume preparation time.
2) Ask participants of their access needs in advance.
3) On the day, check in with participants. Maybe some access needs have changed.
4) Plan breaks. Additionally, communicate clearly that people can have breaks at any time according to their needs. Provide quiet space for people to have a break.
5) Design the session by building in more time than you think you need.
6) Begin and end on time. If extra time is needed, acknowledge that you are running overtime and give people the possibility of exiting the meeting. Alternatively, plan an extra meeting for the extra time that is needed.

7) Allow people to contribute in different ways. For instance, speaking, writing, and drawing. Allow different forms of structuring argumentation. Allow silence. Acknowledge that someone’s silence can be prossing time or a valid point in itself.
8) Use a facilitator who can manage holding space and speed of the discussion, invite people to share their perspectives and be reached before and after meetings for clarification of things.
9) Have a slow approach. Allow the discussion to span over several meetings. Do not rush to a goal or conclusion. Allow it to unfold organically over time.
10) Provide a summary of each meeting. Communicate any significant changes clearly.

Access Intimacy and its Pleasure

Access intimacy is a closeness where someone understands and responds to another person’s access needs, especially around disability, without making it awkward or burdensome. Writer and educator Mia Mingus, who formulated the term, describes it as a feeling of ease and safety, where your body and mind can relax because your needs are met and respected. It is different from receiving basic help or charity, which can feel obligatory or dehumanizing. It is mutual and built on trust, and it is often strongest among people who share similar lived experiences of disability and impact of ableism. “It is a freeing, light, loving feeling” as Mingus describes it and connects it to a form of pleasure. There is a kind of pleasure in institutional access, too. That is the pleasure of being accepted and legitimized by power. But it comes at a cost. Change is imposed on you by the pressure of adaptation to institutional hierarchies. It is a pleasure that can come from getting your needs partly met, but it does not create access intimacy.

Like many other types of intimacy, access intimacy is a foundational framework for building genuine relationships. It is not limited to happen between and to disabled people alone.

“I don’t just want technical and logistical access. I don’t just want inclusion, I want liberatory access and access intimacy.”

-Mia Mingus, ‘Disability Justice, is Simply Another Term for Love’, 2018

What to Remember:

Access Intimacy is Built on Trust
It describes relationships where access needs are recognised and supported without discomfort, burden, or judgement.

Access Goes Beyond Accommodation
Meeting practical needs is important, but true access involves belonging, care, mutuality, and the freedom to be fully recognised. 

Liberatory Access Transforms 
Relationships Access intimacy challenges institutional approaches that only provide partial inclusion and instead creates possibilities for deeper connection, dignity, and shared responsibility. 

Access Through Communication

Communication plays a big role in making the world more accessible. It helps ensure that everyone, no matter their abilities, can access information and take part in opportunities. When we communicate clearly and inclusively, it is easier to spot barriers, understand different needs, and create solutions that allow everyone to participate. It also helps raise awareness about accessibility and encourages empathy, understanding, and inclusion. By listening to one another, sharing ideas, and providing information in accessible ways, we can create spaces where everyone feels welcome, can contribute with confidence, and fully enjoy cultural life.

“…because there has never been a room to accommodate that. The language is not developed. So every time someone asks what I need or how it could be better, it’s like I didn’t even have a starting point because no institution has ever made me develop that language. But my word is accommodation.”

-TOD member

What to Remember:

Communication Enables Access
Clear and inclusive communication helps identify barriers and support participation. 

Listening Creates Understanding
Sharing experiences and recognising different needs builds empathy and more inclusive spaces. 

Accessible Language Supports Inclusion 
Developing ways to express access needs helps everyone contribute and engage with confidence.

Plain Language

Plain language is clear, simple writing that is easy to understand. It is aimed at level A2. This means it works well for people who find reading difficult, people who are learning a language, and anyone who is new to a topic. Plain language is also useful for a much wider audience. Most people are not specialists. When institutions and museums write about complex topics, plain language helps everyone understand the content.

Plain language is different from Easy Language. Easy Language follows stricter rules and is aimed at level A16. It is designed for people with learning disabilities. Texts in Easy Language must be reviewed by people with learning disabilities before they are published.

What to Remember:

Plain Language Improves Understanding
Clear and simple writing makes information more accessible for wider audiences, including people who are new to a topic. 

Different Access Needs Require Different Approaches
Plain language and Easy Language serve different purposes, with Easy Language following specific guidelines for people with learning disabilities.

10 Principles of Plain Language

These 10 principles bring together guidelines from four sources: National Archives Washington (NARA), the EU accessibility guidelines, Oxford’s neuroinclusive guide, and The Autistic Self Advocacy Network’s (ASAN) Easy Read framework.

This list, the 10 principles, is not a checklist to necessarily follow in full. They work in combinations. Applying just some of them can already improve the readability of a text:

1) Write for your reader, not yourself
2) Lead with what matters most. State your main point first, then add supporting detail. Readers should not have to read to the end to understand the point.
3) Keep sentences short. 15–20 words per sentence. If a sentence needs a comma, consider splitting it into two.
4) One topic per paragraph. Keep paragraphs 100 words or 3 – 5 sentences maximum, each devoted to a single topic. One idea per sentence.
5) Use everyday words. Choose the simpler word whenever possible. Define any technical terms. If you have many, add a glossary.

Examples:

“laborious” could be rephrased to “hard” “liminal” could be rephrased to “in between”

6) Use active voice. Make clear who is doing what. Active voices are shorter, more direct, and easier to follow. Use passive voice only when the actor is genuinely unknown or irrelevant.
7) Cut what does not add meaning. Remove filler words, repetitive phrases (when not necessary for understanding), and anything the reader does not need to act. Every word should earn its place. Leave out abbreviations or spell them out on first use.
8) Use lists and structure. Turn long sentences with multiple items into bulleted lists. Use tables to simplify complex comparisons. Use digits for numbers, not words. Structure aids scanning.
9) Be consistent. Repeat key terms and ideas throughout the document. Use the same word for the same concept each time. Avoid swapping synonyms to avoid repetition for the sake of verbal elegance; it confuses some readers.
10) Test readability. Ideally, have someone from your target audience read it. If they struggle, revise. Or check readability with a tool (Hemingway or Readable). 

Sensing, Bending, Failing Language

Sense-Making in Crip Time
Sense-making, making sense of the world, in crip time means imagining that process outside straight, linear timelines and the kind of thinking tied to them. Just as crip time bends the clock, it also bends how we reason, letting knowledge unfold outside capitalist standards of progress, productivity, usefulness, and speed. Sense-making in crip time is a practice of welcoming reasoning to unfold across different timelines and futures. Knowledge is allowed to take different shapes, supported by different kinds of arguments. It can look like conversations full of silences, or moments of intensity where too much is shared in too little time. It can look like an unfinished thought, or a fragment of one. Connections between ideas happen outside any planned schedule or expectation of arrival to a certain conclusion.

Sensing Meaning
“…there has to be something non-verbal. Relying only on language is impossible for me because my structure of thought does not come in one line. I would like to advocate for this, because, for instance, you can be thinking in images…or seeing with your hands, or like thinking with your whole body. And how art and culture in general affect your body, transforming it into a political subjectivity.” 

-TOD member

Meaning is made through embodied difference. It welcomes the lived experience of the environment where meaning is made, together with all the senses your body involves in sensing it.  The phrase “making sense” becomes, in this way, quite literal, rather than referring to a form of clarity, rationality, or socially established logic. Making sense becomes a process of sensing meaning and granting the senses authority in meaning-making.

Deep Listening
Deep Listening, a practice introduced by American composer Pauline Oliveros, refers to a form of active listening that goes beneath the surface of sound. At its core, Deep Listening means listening in as many ways as possible to everything that can be heard, all the time. It explores the relationships between all sounds – natural or technological, intended or unintended, real, remembered, or imagined – including thought itself.

This includes language and its sound qualities, such as its rhythms, hesitations, silences, intonations, different grammars with more, as well as the environmental and atmospheric context sound exists within. Listening changes both what is heard and the listener; Oliveros calls this the “listening effect.” Two balanced modes, focal (detail) and global (expansion), create connections with everything. Listening shapes culture, locally and universally, through directing attention, gathering meaning, interpreting, and deciding on action. It can be applied as a method, a way to approach speech and communication that does not follow standard patterns or expressions as meaningful, as an equally valid form of knowledge. By honouring both focal and global attention as equally valid modes, it reframes different attention styles, including neurodivergent ones, as a way of being in the world otherwise rather than deficiency.

Welcomeability
In one of the dialogue meetings, “welcomeability” entered our vocabulary. It is a word meant to open the possibility of welcoming someone into our reality as disabled people. It carries the capacity to share knowledge and experience with someone, an institution for instance, who does not yet know enough to accommodate you.

“…for example “welcomeability”. We could make up a new word for what we mean. It’s just a small thing that I always wanted to do. I love that we can make our own words. Do you feel like the tool will be speaking to disabled people or are we trying to communicate to non-disabled people? Which one do you feel like? But wasn’t it a tool for institutions? That was how I understood it. It would also be inclusive for disabled people carrying this out in institutions. By doing this for the institutions, we are also accommodating them to understand us.”

-TOD member

“When existing language doesn’t fit, or doesn’t exist, for what you mean, it opens space to invent new words. This practice of inventing language raises questions like: who is the text actually speaking to?”

-TOD member

Welcomeability asks for mutuality by making a temporary room for building familiarity with different forms of accommodation. It can be approached as a translation process between different ideas of needs. Its goal is future-oriented: to create the possibility for more disabled people to enter cultural institutions. And entering a space as a disabled person means as much to enter language, producing new words, grammars, and understandings.

Carrying Wobbly Argumentation
“Science fiction writer Ursula Le Guin thought of books as carrier bags or containers; humanity’s first tools being the back, the sack, the net, something to hold it all together, rather than weapons of domination with spear like narratives. Carrierbag books are full ‘full of beginnings without end’, holding initiations and losses, transformations and translations, containing ‘far more tricks’ than conflicts, far fewer triumphs than snares and delusions”

-Alice Hattrick, ‘Ill Feelings’, 2022

Argumentation is the process of forming reasons, drawing conclusions from them, and applying those conclusions to the matter at hand. It uses rhetoric to challenge, and potentially change, an opposing view. Wobbly arguments differ. It does not always follow a standard model and when it does, it welcomes the model’s collapse. Its goal is not to win a debate, but to hold many realities at once, while asking for different kinds of support for these realities. Not a spear aimed at victory, but a vessel built to carry contradiction: fragments, sensations, incoherency, “full of beginnings without end”. The term ‘wobbly arguments’ is inspired by visual artist Karin Kyto to use “wobbly” to describe this form of argumentation. She uses “wobbliness” as conceptual and sculptural tool in her artistic practice. Kyto’s application of wobbliness to sculptures makes them appear as vessels of narrative that are about to collapse.

Softness of Failure
Language always fails. Welcoming and anticipating failure can be approached as a form of generosity. It is a way of saying that there is enough, enough space, enough time, to keep trying. To remake, re-do, feel again, shape-shift. It is a way of insisting on softness, on the not-yet fully defined. The softness of failure is, in itself, a wobbly argument to claim more space and time to keep trying. It is an opening to desire what is not yet there and a way of claiming continuous presence and process. 

Staying with Discomfort

Discomfort is a part of being together as a group. It comes up when we share space, exchange ideas, and try to build something collectively. It can feel different to each person, and it can shift over time. This is an invitation to look at discomfort more closely. Not welcome it better. Sometimes discomfort comes from the gap between our values and what we experience in practice. That friction can be difficult. But it can also be generative. Discomfort can be a way of knowing, a form of closeness, and part of how trust is built. This list is intended for conversation, reflection, and creating spaces where honouring discomfort can become an intimate way of building relationships:

-What do we mean by discomfort in the first place?
-How does discomfort feel in our bodyminds? What senses are engaged? What does it do to our commitment of being together in the same space?
-How do we talk about it? How do we welcome it?
-How do we allow ourselves to feel uncomfortable emotions? How do we feel them from a beginning to an end? What do we need to fully process emotions?
-What challenges come up when our ideas and ideals create friction with what we actually experience?
-How do we adjust when our experience of discomfort shifts?
-How do we create a fluid social contract for staying with discomfort?
-How do we prefer to be held accountable when we cause discomfort for others? How is that like, or different from, how we hold others accountable?
How do we honour discomfort as a way of making knowledge, a form of intimacy, and part of building relationships? And how can we use this knowledge when designing future spaces?

Examples of Potential Discomfort(s):

Conflicting Sensory Needs
-One person will need bright lighting, while the other needs a dimmer setting. Sound can work well for some, while others prefer silence.
-Some are supported by strong scents, while others experience headaches, migraines, disorientation, or nausea from smells.
-Some need verbal processing through an active discussion for instance, while others need long pauses and quiet to think and process.
-One person may need cool temperatures and fresh airflow, while another is highly sensitive to cold air.

Technology and Mediation
-Some require screen readers, cameras, microphones, captions, or communication apps to fully participate in all parts and processes of the group.
-These technologies while being absolutely necessary for some, can be, in some cases, overstimulating for others.

Different Relationships to Structure
-Some need clear schedules and predictability, while others feel limited by fixed planning and need flexibility or spontaneity.

Different Communication Styles
-Some people do not communicate verbally and/or visually.
-Some people communicate directly and literally, while others rely on implication, emotional cues, or nonverbal expression.
Some come from multiple backgrounds and cultures, and some expressions and words carry different meanings.
-Some are comfortable with expressing emotions, while others are not.
-Misunderstandings can arise around silence, tone, interruption, timing, expectations or interpretation.

Physical Closeness and Distance
-While a slow rhythm can cause anxiety around reaching the goals of the group, a fast one can exclude some members.
-Some people appreciate hugs and touch a form of mutual emotional co-regulation, while for others this can be overstepping a bodily boundary. Difference in Visibility of Disability
-Invisible disabilities can create assumptions of capability, legitimacy, or labour distribution, which puts an extra task on the participant to explain and set boundaries.
-Repeated experience with assumptions can also create self-doubt and hesitance with asking for access needs. Rhythm and Energy Differences
-Changes in capacity can affect participation. Among other things, this can be caused by pain, chronic fatigue, burnout, and overstimulation.