Creating assistive technology in disabled communities, five years on: a reflection of neurodivergency and crafting accessible social spaces
Abstract
Five years ago, our paper, "Would You Be Mine: Appropriating Minecraft as an Assistive Technology for Youth with Autism" won Best Paper at ASSETS 2016 (Ringland et al. 2016). In that paper, we reported on our ethnographic engagement with a community for autistic youth called "Autcraft." In Autcraft, we found community members using do-it-yourself (DIY) making activities to transform their Minecraft game into an array of assistive technologies which enhanced their everyday lives. Although centered around the Minecraft game platform, the Autcraft community spans across an array of other social media platforms - such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitch. The creative ethos we found flourishing in Autcraft shares a lineage with past scholarship highlighting how disabled individuals have long adopted, adapted, and appropriated systems in order to serve as assistive devices. Five years on, we take some time here to reflect on what has happened since and what we are looking towards for the future.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
There is an emerging body of work that involves neurodivergent adults in knowledge creation such as co-design and acknowledges the importance of neurodivergent perspectives in technology design.
“However, there is an emerging body of work that involves neurodivergent adults in knowledge creation such as co-design and acknowledges the importance of neurodivergent perspectives in technology design [39, 64], such as a 2019 study, which relevantly investigated why existing digital time management tools remain inadequate for ADHD adults [29].”
From Burnout by Design: How Digital Systems Overburden Neurodivergent Students in Higher Education (2025) · cites this paper as [64]
Across HCI studies, there is a tendency to design systems that address perceived neurodivergent behaviours from an external viewpoint without adequately considering internal struggles.
“Across a number of studies [9, 29, 30, 39, 54, 55, 64, 74, 81, 90, 93], there is a noticeable tendency to design systems that address perceived neurodivergent behaviours, often from an external viewpoint, without adequately considering the internal struggles experienced by neurodivergent individuals.”
From Burnout by Design: How Digital Systems Overburden Neurodivergent Students in Higher Education (2025) · cites this paper as [64]
The gap investigated by this work lies at the intersection of HCI work that actively involves neurodivergent subjects and literature investigating neurodivergent individuals in higher education and broad accessibility of universities and their systems.
“The gap investigated by this work lies at the intersection of the mentioned HCI work which actively involves its neurodivergent subjects [21, 29, 39, 64, 64, 93], and the body of literature which investigates the experience of these neurodivergent individuals in higher education [4, 14, 15, 51, 57, 70], as well as work investigatigating the broad accessibility of universities and their systems [3,”
From Burnout by Design: How Digital Systems Overburden Neurodivergent Students in Higher Education (2025) · cites this paper as [64]
Designing for adoption or appropriation and identifying coping mechanisms used by neurodivergent individuals have emerged as effective strategies for creating more accessible digital spaces.
“Designing for adoption or appropriation and identifying coping mechanisms used by neurodivergent individuals have emerged as effective strategies for creating more accessible digital spaces [64, 93].”
From Burnout by Design: How Digital Systems Overburden Neurodivergent Students in Higher Education (2025) · cites this paper as [64]
Cites
Interdependence as a Frame for Assistive Technology Research and Design
Bennett, C. L., Brady, E., & Branham, S. M. (2018) · Proceedings of the 20th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility · doi:10.1145/3234695.3236348 · Cited by 407 · see citing works
Das, M., Tang, J., Ringland, K. E., & Piper, A. M. (2021) · Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction · doi:10.1145/3449282 · Cited by 142 · see citing works
Self-citation
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Eagle, T., Baltaxe-Admony, L. B., & Ringland, K. E. (2024) · ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing · doi:10.1145/3689648 · Cited by 20 · see citing works
“ND communities come together in online social spaces to commiserate, make friends, and share experiences [29, 35, 56, 62, 77].”
Self-citationBurnout by Design: How Digital Systems Overburden Neurodivergent Students in Higher Education
Tcherdakoff, N. A., Marshall, P., Dowthwaite, A., Bird, J., & Cox, A. L. (2025) · Proceedings of the 4th Annual Symposium on Human-Computer Interaction for Work · doi:10.1145/3729176.3729193 · Cited by 9 · see citing works
“The gap investigated by this work lies at the intersection of the mentioned HCI work which actively involves its neurodivergent subjects [21, 29, 39, 64, 64, 93], and the body of literature which investigates the experience of these neurodivergent individuals in higher education [4, 14, 15, 51, 57,…”
Influential
- Authors
- Ringland, K. E., & Wolf, C. T.
- Affiliations
- University of California, Santa Cruz (US)
- Venue
- ACM SIGACCESS Accessibility and Computing
- Published
- 2021-10
- Issue
- 131
- Pages
- 1-5
- ISSN
- 1558-1187 (ISSN-L)
- 1558-2337
- OpenAlex
- W4200565043
- Cited by
- 7
- References
- 2
- Citations by year
- 2025: 5 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 1
- FWCI
- 0.82
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- ACM SIGACCESS Accessibility and Computing (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › Occupational Therapy › Assistive Technology in Communication and Mobility
- Social Sciences › Human Factors and Ergonomics › Digital Accessibility for Disabilities
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Disability Rights and Representation
- Keywords
- assistive technology, autism spectrum disorder, Minecraft, autistic youth, game modification, disabled communities, social media, creative appropriation, assistive technology design
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
