The Three Praxes Framework - A Thematic Review and Map of Social Accessibility Research

This paper introduces the Three Praxes Framework, derived from a grounded theory analysis of 90 social accessibility studies (2011–2025), to map the field's fragmented practices across Artifact, Ecosystem, and Epistemology sites and advocate for an integrated cycle where lived experiences, material realities, and theoretical knowledge collectively transform access ecosystems.

The Gist

Imagine the field of Social Accessibility Research (the study of how to make the world work better for disabled people) as a massive, bustling construction site. For the last 15 years, thousands of researchers have been working hard here. But the authors of this paper, JiWoong Jang, Patrick Carrington, and Andrew Begel, noticed a strange problem: everyone is working in separate rooms, rarely talking to each other.

They looked at 90 important papers from the last 15 years and realized the work is split into three isolated groups. They call this the "Three Praxes Framework."

Here is the simple breakdown of their discovery, using some everyday analogies.

1. The Three Isolated Rooms (The Three Praxes)

The researchers found that most projects fall into one of three categories, but they rarely mix:

• Room A: The Builders (Artifact Praxis)

  • What they do: They build tools. Think of them as the carpenters and engineers. They create new apps, wheelchairs, or AI systems.
  • The Problem: They often build things without asking, "Does this actually fit into people's real lives?" They might build a fancy new communication device, but they don't realize that the user's family doesn't know how to use it, or that the school system won't accept it.
  • Analogy: Building a perfect, high-tech wheelchair but forgetting that the user's house has stairs they can't get up.

• Room B: The Observers (Ecosystem Praxis)

  • What they do: They study relationships and environments. Think of them as sociologists or anthropologists. They watch how families care for each other, how schools handle inclusion, or how society treats disabled people.
  • The Problem: They are great at spotting the problems (e.g., "This school is too loud for autistic kids"), but they often stop there. They document the pain but don't always build the tools to fix it.
  • Analogy: Writing a brilliant report about how the stairs are too steep, but never actually designing a ramp.

• Room C: The Philosophers (Epistemology Praxis)

  • What they do: They question the "why" and "how we know." Think of them as the critics and theorists. They ask big questions like, "Why do we define disability this way?" or "Who gets to decide what a 'good' life looks like?"
  • The Problem: Their ideas are deep and important, but they often stay in the library. They critique the system, but they don't always translate those big ideas into a physical tool or a new policy.
  • Analogy: Writing a powerful essay about why stairs are a form of oppression, but not telling the builders how to build a ramp that respects the user's dignity.

2. The Missing Link: The "Reflexive Cycle"

The paper argues that the magic happens when these three rooms open the doors and talk to each other.

They propose a Reflexive Cycle (a loop where everything feeds into everything else):

1. Theory inspires Building: The Philosophers' big ideas should tell the Builders what to make.
2. Building changes Relationships: When the Builders make a new tool, it should change how families and communities interact (the Ecosystem).
3. Relationships challenge Theory: When the Observers see how people actually use (or reject) the tool, it should force the Philosophers to update their theories.

The Current Reality: Right now, the loop is broken. We have great theories, great tools, and great observations, but they aren't connecting. This means we might build tools that help people "fit in" to a broken system, rather than fixing the system itself.

3. Two Ways to Look at Change

The authors also noticed that researchers have two different "attitudes" about how change happens:

• Time Attitude (Temporal Orientation):

  • Fixing the leak (Remedial): "The pipe is broken; let's tape it." (Accepts the system is broken and just patches it).
  • Learning to swim (Adaptive): "The water is rising; let's teach people to swim." (Helps people navigate the broken system).
  • Building a boat (Generative): "Let's build a boat so we don't need to swim in the flood." (Imagines a totally new, better future).
  • The Issue: Many researchers mix these up. They might use "Generative" language (talk about revolution) but build "Remedial" tools (just a slightly better patch).

• Who Matters (Stakeholder Focus):

  • The Individual: "Let's help this one person cope."
  • The Network: "Let's help the family or team work together."
  • The Society: "Let's change the laws and buildings for everyone."
  • The Issue: Often, researchers say they want to change society, but their tools only help one individual cope.

The Big Takeaway

The authors are calling for a team-up.

Imagine a construction project where the Architect (Philosopher), the Engineer (Builder), and the Community Liaison (Observer) sit at the same table.

• The Architect says, "We need a building that respects human dignity."
• The Engineer says, "Okay, I'll design a ramp, but I need to know how the community uses it."
• The Liaison says, "The community needs a ramp that doesn't look like a hospital device; it needs to look like art."

In short: The paper says that to truly improve the lives of disabled people, we can't just build better gadgets, write better theories, or study better relationships in isolation. We need to weave them all together. When we do that, we stop just helping people survive a broken world and start building a world that works for everyone.

Technical Summary

Here is a detailed technical summary of the paper "The Three Praxes Framework — A Thematic Review and Map of Social Accessibility Research" by Jang, Carrington, and Begel (CHI '26).

1. Problem Statement

The field of Social Accessibility (research examining how disability is experienced and negotiated within social contexts) has grown significantly since 2011. However, the authors identify a critical structural fragmentation within the field:

• Isolation of Practices: Research operates in silos. Constructive work (building artifacts) often proceeds separately from theoretical inquiry (epistemology), while ecosystem studies (relational dynamics) document challenges without proposing tangible solutions.
• Disconnect Between Insight and Action: Critical insights regarding systemic barriers and power dynamics often fail to inform the design of assistive technologies (AT). Conversely, artifacts built to challenge systems are often evaluated using conformity metrics that reinforce existing norms.
• Lack of Reflexive Tools: Existing frameworks are either too granular (project-level lenses like Ability-Based Design) or too superficial (bibliometric reviews). There is no field-level tool to analyze how different modes of research practice relate to one another or to guide a more integrated, reflexive approach.

The core problem is that without integration, the field risks producing "academic exercises" where insights remain theoretical while assistive technologies inadvertently reinforce existing barriers for disabled people.

2. Methodology

The authors employed a Constructivist Grounded Theory approach to derive a new conceptual framework from the literature itself, rather than imposing an external model.

• Data Collection:
  • Search Period: January 2011 to June 2025 (spanning 15 years).
  • Venues: Premier HCI and accessibility venues (ACM: ASSETS, CHI, CSCW, DIS, TACCESS, TOCHI, UIST; IEEE: HRI, ISMAR, VR, VIS).
  • Initial Pool: 8,731 papers identified via keyword search for disability/AT terms.
  • Filtering: A two-pass process narrowed this to 1,599 papers (adding social relevance keywords like "stigma," "identity," "community").
  • Final Corpus: 605 papers underwent manual screening for conceptual relevance.
• Theoretical Sampling:
  • From the 605 papers, a 90-paper subset was curated based on "theoretical richness." Inclusion criteria required explicit focus on social/experiential phenomena, rich qualitative methodologies (e.g., ethnography, co-design), or direct engagement with social/theoretical frameworks.
  • Papers with purely technical, algorithmic, or functional usability contributions were excluded.
• Analysis Process:
  • Open Coding: The first author extracted 362 unique conceptual nodes from the 90 papers.
  • Axial Coding: Concepts were grouped into 46 granular codes, which were then synthesized into six Thematic Territories.
  • Selective Coding: The authors identified overarching structural patterns, leading to the emergence of the Three Praxes Framework (three sites of practice, two cross-cutting stances, and one reflexive cycle).

3. Key Contributions

A. The Three Praxes Framework

The central contribution is a field-level framework comprising three sites of practice, two cross-cutting stances, and a model for integration.

1. Three Sites of Practice (Praxes):

• Artifact Praxis (Constructive): Focuses on material construction and design interventions (e.g., building DIY-AT, prosthetics, design fiction, or collaborative platforms).
• Ecosystem Praxis (Relational): Examines how access functions within social arrangements (e.g., family care networks, institutional support systems, community dynamics, and navigating automated systems).
• Epistemology Praxis (Theoretical): Challenges fundamental assumptions about knowledge, power, and disability (e.g., Methodological Justice, Identity Sovereignty, critiquing algorithmic bias).

2. Two Cross-Cutting Stances Toward Change:
These dimensions characterize how a project approaches change, regardless of its primary praxis:

• Temporal Orientation:
  • Remedial: Accepts current systems as fixed; seeks immediate fixes.
  • Adaptive: Helps stakeholders navigate existing systems over time.
  • Generative: Envisions and builds toward fundamentally different futures/norms.
• Stakeholder Focus:
  • Individual: Focuses on personal strategies and empowerment.
  • Network: Addresses relationships, families, and communities.
  • Societal: Targets institutional structures and systemic transformation.

3. The Reflexive Praxis Cycle:
A model proposing that these praxes should not operate in isolation but should inform one another bidirectionally:

• Artifact ↔ Epistemology: Building generates theory through failure; theory inspires novel construction.
• Epistemology ↔ Ecosystem: Critical frameworks reshape social arrangements; relational realities challenge theoretical assumptions.
• Ecosystem ↔ Artifact: Social dynamics drive what gets built; deployed artifacts transform relational possibilities.

B. A Map of the Field (Six Thematic Territories)

The authors mapped the 90-paper corpus into six distinct arenas of inquiry:

1. Communication as World-Building: Debates on meaning-making (e.g., collective vs. sender-receiver models).
2. Critical Making Practices: Spectrum from DIY-AT as resistance to prosthetics for social conformity.
3. Access Ecologies: Distribution of access labor (e.g., who bears the cost of inaccessibility).
4. Methodological Justice: Questions of epistemic authority (who counts as a "knower").
5. Identity Sovereignty Complex: Negotiations of disclosure, masking, and visibility.
6. Algorithmic Disability Encounters: The paradox of relying on AI systems that may perpetuate ableism.

4. Results and Findings

• Structural Fragmentation: The analysis revealed that most papers emphasize a single dominant praxis. For example, artifact papers often lack deep epistemological critique, and ecosystem studies often fail to propose material interventions.
• Missed Connections: Rich findings in one praxis often result in only high-level, vague implications for others. For instance, an ecosystem study might document the burden of care on families but only suggest "better training" as a technical implication, missing the opportunity to redesign the system itself.
• Seeds of Integration: The authors identified specific examples where the reflexive cycle is already occurring (e.g., the DREEM project), where epistemological critique led to methodological artifacts, which were then deployed in ecosystems, generating new theoretical refinements.
• Barriers to Integration: The fragmentation is sustained by:
  • Specialized publication venues (theory vs. tech vs. ethnography).
  • Evaluation metrics that prioritize depth over breadth.
  • Funding structures that separate technical innovation from theoretical research.
  • Disciplinary silos between engineering and critical disability studies.

5. Significance and Implications

• Diagnostic Tool: The framework allows researchers to locate their work within the field, identifying what they are doing (Praxis) and their stance on change (Temporal/Stakeholder).
• Call for Integration: It argues that meaningful transformation requires the exchange between building, relating, and theorizing. Meaningful change cannot be achieved by better theory, better artifacts, or richer ethnographies alone; it requires their mutual reinforcement.
• Impact on Disabled People: The disconnect has material consequences. When critical insights about systemic barriers do not inform design, technologies may inadvertently reinforce those barriers. Integration offers a path where lived experiences shape material realities, and material practice transforms ecosystems of access.
• Future Directions: The authors call for venues, funders, and researchers to create space for cross-praxis articulation (e.g., multi-stage projects, evaluation criteria that value integration) and to apply this framework to Global South contexts and other accessibility subfields.

In summary, the paper provides a critical map of the social accessibility landscape, diagnosing a structural disconnect between theory, practice, and social context, and proposing a Reflexive Praxis Cycle as a mechanism to unify these efforts for more impactful and just outcomes.