Price discusses how one participant, Tom, discussed how after having a brain tumor removed, he had bad balance that would make walking down the hallways hard and it would be harder if he had to navigate around a group of people. Price point's out Tom's experience is an example of how mobility can change over time and with different people and that even for people who can walk, mobility is not stable or a binary state. 

Price notes that participants discussed how mobility needs weren't always visible and their mobility was impacted by not just the accessibility of a physical space but also by time and relations.

Mobility Visibility

Price, M. (2024). Crip Spacetime. Duke University Press.

Crip Spacetime

Tom and his Brain Tumor

Price discusses how one participant, Adrian had trouble moving through large parking lots at her university because she had previously been stalked by one of her former students in those parking lots. Adrian has accommodations because of her limb amputation that require she waits alone in those parking lots for paratransit services to take her to her office or classroom. Price points out how Adrian's past trauma has impacted her mobility in ways that aren't often thought about when we design systems of accommodation or access on college campuses.

Adrian and Parking Lots

Price notes how Denise, a blind professor, when attending one of her first large academic conferences, had to spend lots of energy trying to navigate around people in busy hallways or engage in small informal networking situations, so she decided she was going to have her husband come with her to future conferences. Denise noted that she preferred her husband because the rushed pace of the conference didn't lend itself toward asking for help from a conference organizer, using paid assistants increased the likelihood she experienced infantilization, and her husband was able to identify people Denise knew she needed to network with informally in a way a paid aid might not be able to. Price notes that Denise's experience shows how, while a conference building could be physically accessible, time and accompaniment can overlap to create crip spacetime and ways of inaccess that are not perceptible to non-disabled conference organizers.

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