Access as Practice: Deaf-Tech Interaction in Motion
TL;DR
This analysis reveals that Deaf–Tech interaction is better understood as socio-technical practices centered on deaf lived experiences, and reframes accessibility not as a fixed property of specific tools or environments, but as a set of emergent, embodied, situated, and relational practices shaped through everyday engagement with common technologies.
Abstract
Deaf people use mainstream technologies as part of their everyday access infrastructures. Yet, little attention has been paid to how these technologies are used within the embodied, situated, and relational contexts of deaf daily lives. This gap is shaped by a binary dichotomy between assistive and general-purpose technologies, through which deaf users are often positioned within a medicalized technological landscape. This work draws on the autoethnographic experiences of a deaf, signing researcher during international travel, examining access practices through a vignette-based analysis. The findings illustrate a range of situations encountered while navigating, communicating, and engaging with others using common applications alongside speech-to-text technologies. Our analysis reveals that Deaf–Tech interaction is better understood as socio-technical practices centered on deaf lived experiences. This perspective elaborates how technologies are appropriated and reappropriated in practice, function as shared interactional media, and co-shape the meaning of visual information. Hence, this work reframes accessibility not as a fixed property of specific tools or environments, but as a set of emergent, embodied, situated, and relational practices shaped through everyday engagement with common technologies.