ABSTRACT

This chapter is based on collaborative autoethnography about being disabled in contemporary working life. It draws from the two authors’ experiences as instructors and researchers at a Swedish university and focuses on examples of inaccessibility in everyday situations. Disabled people are underrepresented in academia and disabled academics are hindered from fully participating. We find ableist structures and practices within working life and the current neoliberal organisation of society, together with the individualisation of work environment problems and diffuse responsibility, as the main obstacles to accessibility. The chapter opens up a critique of hindrances to accessibility within the academic walls. It is proposed that the focus be shifted from the problematised outsider to how ableism, built on the idea of the normal worker, excludes. While waiting for the person responsible for accessibility to raise his or her hand, one way of achieving change is to become crip killjoys, and thus pay attention to injustice.