I need to say this up front: If you are a researcher who does research trying to do “good” for the world and then also gets involved seeing things through, this post isn’t really intended for you. My audience are the researchers who only research but still talk about “justice,” doing “good,” and advocating for “social good.”

Too many folks (yes even some of the ones who exclusively research marginalized folks) talk the talk but don’t walk the walk. This is meant as a provocation for that audience.

I also do work at the intersection of human-computer interaction (HCI) and accessibility. Most of what I say below assumes some sort of HCI audience, but I reckon that all kinds of researchers interested in doing “good” for the world in other disciplines will find worthwhile parallels.

The way the researcher’s social role is framed is naive

Researchers tend to frame their work as either a knowledge gap or an innovation gap. For those researchers who believe themselves to be good, the assumption here is that if we (the proverbial “we”) just simply knew more or had new techniques/systems, others could “solve” problems like inaccessibility. Bad stuff happens (by this logic) as a result of missing knowledge or technology. This is the knew/new kind of approach, as I like to say. This, however, is naive.

Researchers imagine themselves playing a role in the production of solutions somewhat along these lines: “I am the brilliant individual who discovers and innovates! After I do what I do best, it is then up to the lowly, downstream “practitioners” or “community members” to find, understand, and act upon my work. The researcher-practitioner gap is always the practitioner’s problem! If the world doesn’t improve, I know that I did my part at least. I passed the baton. It is their turn to sprint!” But research papers and obscure, unmaintained github repositories are virtually worthless to outsiders.

So, the major factor that holds back research (and progress) IS social in nature. As an example in my own field of work: we know a lot about inaccessibility and we have all kinds of great tools and systems and techniques. But what we lack is action at scale, people getting involved, and real change taking place. Chartability, my past work, wasn’t assembled with a research outcome in mind. It was an attempt to bridge knowledge gaps so that practitioners could actually have resources to build a better world. I’ve since worked tirelessly to see it used at Microsoft, FiveThirtyEight, [an NDA collaboration], Visa, Highsoft, Project Jupyter, local and federal US gov orgs, and as an interface with international standards bodies. And my Data Navigator project has had a similar approach but as an innovative tool. I didn’t just make a cool new thing. Now I’m working with Quansight/Bokeh, [2 other NDA collaborations], tldraw, Atlassian, and 2 separate individuals to actually implement/adapt the project towards their problem spaces (or simply advise/consult in their journey). I am following through on my work, not just hoping someone else is inspired enough to do it themselves.

Passing the baton (or assuming it should be passed) isn’t working

To accomplish good in the world, I would argue that we need more than just a classist knew/new approach of baton passing. The baton passing isn’t working. It’s time to change how we frame our role in all of this. We can’t simply continue putting out papers without doing something about it. Believing ourselves to be the top of the ladder in a hierarchy of social action towards good fundamentally limits the good we are capable of.

For me, I work with “practitioners,” so I’ll speak from that experience. (Not everyone does, some folks work with “communities” or otherwise). And yes, practitioners just don’t want to do things sometimes, even if it is the right thing to do or a good thing. It’s a waste of our work to just blame them for this. The reality of practitioners not doing what we want them to is precisely why the baton passing assumption is so frustrating in its arrogance. If we really cared about outcomes, we wouldn’t just get mad at our roommate for not doing the dishes. We would either do the dishes ourselves, find a way to make life more equitable with some kind of intervention, or simply get a new roommate/move out. Researchers need more social maturity.

I have spent a lot of time in practitioner spaces and still do. I obviously spent the first part of my career as one. And nowadays, about 8 hours per week of my time during the school year is spent on non-research collaborations with industry partners. I’ve heard my collaborators say they don’t have time for accessibility work, even though they feel like they know what they should be doing and even have tools available (common feedback from journalists and startups). Others believe inaccessibility is just inevitable, so they shouldn’t worry about it. Some have told me that they don’t want to work on accessibility because it makes them feel bad about their work (knowing they aren’t good enough). Others don’t work on accessibility simply because they are understaffed, under-resourced, or actively coerced against it. Not doing the right thing can be traced back to all kinds of reasons.

But fundamentally researchers who are interested in a better world must recognize praxiological and ethical gaps to be filled with action, not merely epistemological or ontological gaps to be filled with knew/new stuff. This is why “justice” is a much better term than simply “social good” (which tends to be popular in more liberal, less critical, techno-positivist spaces). “Justice” is an action-oriented term, while “social good” is easier to relegate to the space of pure ideas. (And of course, even problematic researchers are very much still embedded in “justice” spaces of research and publication.)

It’s high time for impact and outcomes

We need research focused on outcomes at scale. We need policy, interventions, communities, collaborations, and culture that focus on concretely and materially realizing a better world. This is going to feel risky and offer far fewer rewards to researchers because it probably won’t result in the same number of citations per hours of their lives they spend. But if we really believe in justice then we can’t just keep discovering knowledge and innovating, we have to work to follow through. We need comprehensive strategies for addressing barriers people face in a variety of contexts. We need organizational and political action. We need to be willing to put our careers on the line, spending time doing something other than traditional research output. We need to protect and support early career researchers who are taking these risks. We need to be part of de-risking this, for the sake of others we might never meet. We need researchers who have a moral backbone and an actual spine for demonstrating real trailblazing behavior. Bad people don’t just innovate as fast as researchers, but they act on their innovations at a far more rapid pace. We are losing to forces that want to marginalize “expensive” people for maximum, low-hanging profits.

Human rights and a just future is on the line and I’m tired of the research community simply continuing to pump out papers without getting their hands dirty. Senior researchers need to advocate and carve out space for future generations to still get hired AND get tenure doing activities that aren’t just publication-based. We need financial and material incentives set in order to encourage this better world we keep talking about.

Gentle caveats

I want to clarify strongly here that many (if not all) of my peers at the intersection of accessibility and visualization are wonderful people. I hope to encourage all of them to keep doing what they’re doing, to keep fighting for a better world. And I hope (for everyone reading) this provocation is taken as an invigoration, as inspiration, and as a space to reflect.

The outcome I do not want from this post is to see people disheartened or depressed. What I want to see is maturity, growth, hope, and a commitment to doing things (and framing things) in a better way.

That being said, I also (quite passive aggressively) am “sub-tweeting” (sub-blogging?) 2 very specific faculty who have abused my peers (PhD students) and taken advantage of the good work they are doing. All the above applies to them AND a very specific middle finger for taking credit their student’s work without contributing. If you are faculty and your students are actually doing work towards a better world, you sure as hell better be doing everything in your power to clear a path for them in every way you can. I don’t want to see someone take credit for “disability justice” if you haven’t materially done anything towards that yourself.