Accessibility barriers, conflicts, and repairs: understanding the experience of professionals with disabilities in hybrid meetings
Open accessAbstract
Workplaces around the globe are beginning to rapidly adopt hybrid meetings to conduct, plan, and organize their work. While previous literature explores the benefits and drawbacks of hybrid meetings, the experiences of professionals with disabilities are largely missing. With an orientation towards an accessible future of work, we interviewed 21 professionals with disabilities to unpack the accessibility barriers, opportunities, and conflicts of hybrid meetings. We highlight the creative ways professionals with disabilities developed workarounds and repairs to these accessibility tensions. Our paper expands the understanding of accessibility in hybrid meetings by identifying how the visibility of access labor may be affected by being in the room together with other colleagues or joining remotely. We also observed how hybrid configurations can require navigating accessibility conflicts specific to the location site of each participant. Building from our analysis, we offer practical suggestions and design directions to make hybrid meetings accessible.
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In video conferencing, BLV members might prioritize visual privacy, while deaf members might prefer to have visual cues; both need to navigate error-prone captions.
“in video conferencing, BLV members might prioritize visual privacy, while deaf members might prefer to have visual cues; both need to navigate error-prone captions [5, 150].”
From Cripping AI: Reimagining AI Through Lived Disability Experiences (2026) · cites this paper as [5]
Sections 4.1.1 and 5.2.1 describe deaf and hard-of-hearing professionals needing visual cues to identify speakers and lipread. Section 4.1.2 reports inaccurate captions in hybrid meetings. The passages do not establish that blind or low-vision members prioritize visual privacy or that they, too, need to navigate caption errors. (LLM, conf=0.86)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredIn mixed-ability teams, members must deal with inaccessible tools and constantly negotiate between differing and sometimes conflicting needs.
“in mixed-ability teams, where members must deal with inaccessible tools and constantly negotiate between differing and sometimes conflicting needs [5, 97, 101, 150, 248].”
From Cripping AI: Reimagining AI Through Lived Disability Experiences (2026) · cites this paper as [5]
Some described difficulties concentrating in online meetings, often due to background noises.
“Some described difficulties concentrating in online meetings [47,49], often due to background noises [37,55].”
From Homeworking experiences of neuro-divergent workers: systematic review (2024) · cites this paper as [37]
Reliance on non-verbal cues could be difficult and distracting on video calls, which failed to adequately capture facial expressions and body language making it difficult to gauge the reactions of others.
“Reliance on non-verbal cues could be difficult and distracting on video calls, which failed to adequately capture facial expressions and body language making it difficult to gauge the reactions of others [37,39,60].”
From Homeworking experiences of neuro-divergent workers: systematic review (2024) · cites this paper as [37]
As a result, the professional and social rules of remote meetings (e.g. knowing when to talk and when to listen) were unclear.
“As a result, the professional and social rules of remote meetings (e.g.knowing when to talk and when to listen) were unclear [37,39,44,60].”
From Homeworking experiences of neuro-divergent workers: systematic review (2024) · cites this paper as [37]
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- Authors
- Alharbi, R., Tang, J., & Henderson, K.
- Affiliations
- Microsoft (United States) (US)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
- Publisher
- ACM
- Published
- 2023-04-19
- Pages
- 1-15
- OpenAlex
- W4366549113
- Cited by
- 49
- References
- 34
- Citations by year
- 2026: 10 · 2025: 20 · 2024: 17 · 2023: 2
- FWCI
- 20.54
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Microsoft Research
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Human Factors and Ergonomics › Digital Accessibility for Disabilities
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Disability Education and Employment
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Disability Rights and Representation
- Keywords
- hybrid conference, access barriers, workarounds, repair, remote participation, workplace accessibility, accessible design
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