Access Is Not Problem Solving: Disability Justice and

Libraries
Alana Kumbier, Julia Starkey

Library Trends, Volume 64, Number 3, Winter 2016, pp. 468-491 (Article)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: [Link]

For additional information about this article

[Link]

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 Access Is Not Problem Solving: Disability
Justice and Libraries

Alana Kumbier and Julia Starkey

Abstract
In this paper we advocate for an understanding of access that both re-
sponds to the pragmatic needs of the American Library Association’s
“Core Values of Librarianship” (to guide professional practice and
education) and helps librarians and library workers imagine how we
might transform the systems, beliefs, and practices that make libraries
and the profession inaccessible and inequitable. We are interested
in expanding our shared understanding of access so that it includes
a professional ethic of accessibility, justice, and collaboration. We
bring to this argument a set of knowledges, experiences, beliefs, and
politics that inform our understanding of what access is and what it
[[Link]] Project MUSE (2025-10-30 19:06 GMT) University of Arizona

could be. Specifically, our understanding of access and accessibility

is shaped by our participation in disability justice activism, disabil-
ity studies communities, and our personal experience. We suggest
that thinking in solidarity with disability justice movements can be
beneficial to all of us: librarians, library workers, and our communi-
ties of users; those of us with disabilities; those of us who are living
without illnesses or disabilities; and those of us who move between
disabled, ill and not.

The American Library Association’s (ALA) “Core Values of Librarian-

ship” (2004, n.p.) identifies Access as a Core Value and asserts that it is
vital that libraries ensure that “all information resources that are provided
directly or indirectly by the library, regardless of technology, format, or
methods of delivery, should be readily, equally, and equitably accessible to
all library users.” The Core Value of Access emphasizes ready, equal, and
equitable access to information for all. This value suggests that library pa-
trons should not have difficulty accessing information resources provided

LIBRARY TRENDS, Vol. 64, No. 3, 2016 (“Valuing Librarianship: Core Values in Theory and
Practice,” edited by Selinda A. Berg and Heidi LM Jacobs), pp. 468–491. © 2016 The Board
of Trustees, University of Illinois
 disability justice/kumbier & starkey 469
by the library, that the same information should be available to all users,
and that all users should be able to access all of the library’s information
resources. Under this value, providing access also involves figuring out
how patrons with different access needs (for example, sighted and blind
patrons; technologically savvy and technologically inexperienced patrons)
can access the information provided by the library. The notion of ensur-
ing equal access to information is, according to Nancy Kranich (2005, n.p.),
“derived from the concept of fairness as uniform distribution, where ev-
eryone is entitled to the same level of access and can avail themselves if
they so choose,” while ensuring equity requires a commitment to justice
because “fairness also demands remedies to redress historic injustices that
have prevented or diminished access in the first place: for, just as there
can be no fairness without equality, there can be none without justice.” By
emphasizing equity as well as equality in its Core Value of Access, the ALA
promulgates an expectation that North American libraries will provide
access to information resources in ways that accommodate and meet all us-
ers’ needs. This conceptualization of Access as a matter of equity requires
library workers to account not only for the needs of individual users, or of
specific groups of users but also for the contexts (social, cultural, histori-
cal, material, and economic) that shape our users’ terms of access.
The ALA Access statement directs readers to section B.2.1.14 of the
ALA Policy Manual titled “Economic Barriers to Information Access,”
which indicates that the Association understands economic challenges to
be the major obstacle to Access. Indeed, in addition to reiterating the As-
sociation’s charge that libraries provide ready, equal, and equitable access
to information resources, the policy statement argues that publicly funded
libraries should not charge user fees, and opposes legislative or regulatory
limits on access to information as a condition of funding for public librar-
ies (ALA Council, 2013, p. 13). The “Core Values of Librarianship” and
ALA Policy Manual anticipate economic and political threats to Access. By
framing Access in this way, the documents position access as a concern
that libraries can address by focusing on funding and political advocacy
and ensuring that our systems enable users to connect with and access the
information that libraries provide.
The ALA’s Core Values are intended to name and describe the values
that librarians, as members of a professional community, share (Weis-
singer, 2003, p. 34). The values originated in response to “an urgent rec-
ommendation of the 1999 Congress on Professional Education calling for
an official guiding statement,” and as such they are also designed to sup-
port and guide professional education (Gerhardt, 2000, p. 17). When a
Core Values task force proposed an early iteration of the values in 2001,
the ALA leadership and those on the task force believed that the stakes for
their adoption were high. Don Sager (2001, p. 149), the group’s chair, ar-
gued that “without a common set of core values, librarianship could not be
470 library trends/winter 2016
considered to be a profession.” The first set of eight core values was cre-
ated through a process of collective deliberation by a subset of librarians.
Members of the task force identified the values they felt were relevant to
all libraries, and the list of over a hundred values was then “distilled” or
“reduce[d]” (depending on whose account you read) into a list of eight
statements (Weissinger, 2003, p. 34). A statement proposing that libraries
provide “assurance of free and open access to recorded knowledge, infor-
mation, and creative works” was second on that list (p. 34).
With its emphasis on the already-extant, dominant commitments and
functions of librarianship, the task force’s eight values statements pro-
mulgated a set of practices and attitudes as Core Values. These reflect
the interests, beliefs, and ideological frameworks to which their creators
and endorsers subscribed. Although these creators were no doubt well-
intentioned and likely understood their function on the task force as
representative (of the interests and beliefs of other librarians and of the
profession), it is important to remember that the values emerged out of
conversations among a group of librarians living and working in a particu-
lar cultural, political, historical moment. Although this group of librar-
ians was representative in some ways, the task forces assembled to work
through this first and later iterations of the Core Values could not possibly
have represented the politics, value systems, histories, theoretical frame-
works, and practices of the multitude of American librarians. The stake-
holders in the room, the contributors and codifiers, were members of one
professional group, all of whom could afford membership dues, pay for
(or have employers pay for) their travel expenses, and take the time away
from work to participate in such deliberations.
While the Core Value of Access in its brief iteration emphasizes jus-
tice and equality, the longer explication of the value in the ALA Policy
Manual focuses on practices, operations, and suggested interests. In this
way the guidance that professionals receive on ensuring equity and ac-
cess maintains, and protects, a status quo. Thomas Weissinger (2003,
p. 33) suggests (and we agree) that the Core Values adhere to an ortho-
dox, positivist worldview rooted in Enlightenment thought and sustain
“prevalent social views about diversity and equity.” They do this as part of
their work to “standardize education and training of new librarians and
govern decision-making by addressing problems regularly confronted by
professionals” (p. 35). The statement treats equity and access as economic,
political, and technical problems to be solved, but does not challenge li-
brarians to assess, and reassess, what access and equity mean beyond the
level of practice, or beyond the level of access to materials or informa-
tion. The statements do not create space for other possible avenues for
enabling access or thinking about equity.
In this paper we advocate for an understanding of Access that both re-
sponds to the pragmatic needs of the Core Values statement (to guide pro-
 disability justice/kumbier & starkey 471
fessional practice and education) and helps librarians and library work-
ers imagine how we might transform the systems, beliefs, and practices
that make libraries (not just information resources) and the profession
inaccessible and inequitable. We are interested in expanding our shared
understanding of Access so that it includes a professional ethic of acces-
sibility, justice, and collaboration.
We, like the members of the Core Values task force, the ALA Council,
and everyone else who participated in the articulation of the Core Values,
bring to this argument sets of knowledge, experience, beliefs, and politics
that inform our understanding of what access is and what it could be.
Specifically, our understanding of access and accessibility is shaped by our
participation in disability justice activism, disability studies communities,
and our personal experience. In a move akin to that made by advocates for
universal design, who build environments and enact pedagogies designed
to be “as accessible as possible from the outset, to as many people as pos-
sible” (Hamraie, 2013, n.p.), we suggest that thinking in solidarity with
disability justice movements can be beneficial to many of us: librarians,
library workers, and our communities of users, those of us with disabilities,
those of us who are living without illnesses or disabilities, and those of us
who move between disabled, ill and not. We bring disability into conversa-
tion with the existing professional understanding of access because dis-
ability scholars and activists have already developed frameworks for access
that are centered on justice, and have articulated approaches to becoming
accessible that start from commitments to equity and interdependence. In
other words, we can learn from and build on the work that disability schol-
ars and activists are doing, and do so in productive ways that will benefit
many of our users.

Learning from Disability Studies

In order for our argument to align with the work of disability scholars
and activists, we need to share a working understanding of disability. Many
readers may be familiar with the understanding of disability articulated
in major U.S. legislation, like the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
The ADA seeks to prevent discrimination against people with disabilities
in areas of employment, public accommodations, transportation, state
and local government facilities, services, and communications and tele-
communications (U.S. Department of Education, 2006).1 The definition
of disability articulated in the ADA emphasizes individual experiences of
capacity and impairment. According to the act, a person with a disability
is someone who experiences “a physical or mental impairment that sub-
stantially limits one or more major life activities,” has a record of this kind
of experience in the past, or “is regarded as having such an impairment”
(U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, n.d., n.p.). The focus
of the ADA is on the individual worker and his impairment.
 472 library trends/winter 2016
In libraries, disability is often conceptualized in ways that align with
the ADA definition. This is understandable because libraries are organi-
zations where people are employed and access public accommodations.
Libraries may also be state- or locally funded public institutions that pro-
vide services and access to information. Although many libraries remain
inaccessible (and do not meet the ADA requirements), librarians may be
aware of the ADA because of the ways in which their buildings are or are
not structurally accessible. Later in this paper, we will return to one indi-
cator of libraries’ ADA-informed framework: the professional literature,
which focuses on service to people with disabilities, and to a lesser extent,
the employment of librarians with disabilities. While this way of thinking
about disability is not wrong per se, it is important to recognize its limits.
The ADA’s framing of disability as an individual issue aligns well with
what disability studies scholars and activists call the medical model of dis-
ability. The medical model positions disability as a medical problem, as
something to be rehabilitated or treated at the individual level. Disability
studies scholar Alison Kafer (2013, p. 5) asserts that this way of conceptu-
alizing disability “frames atypical bodies and minds as deviant, pathologi-
cal, and defective, best understood and addressed in medical terms.” In
this model, specific kinds of human variation are ascribed with meaning
(and are often pathologized and deemed undesirable or inferior). When
we think of disability in this way, we imagine it as a problem that resides
in particular people’s bodies, something that they and their caretakers
are responsible for correcting, managing, or curing. This way of framing
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disability also encourages a collective societal understanding of how we

should respond to disability: as something to be dealt with through medi-
cal research and treatment, drawing on the resources of individual and
familial support networks.
Thinking about disability as something that is not just an individual
concern has significant ramifications for our understanding of access,
both inside of libraries and beyond. We (the authors) find disability stud-
ies scholar Tanya Titchkosky’s (2011) theorization of the relational char-
acteristic of disability helpful for making this point:

The disabled, people with disabilities, disabled individuals—these

terms . . . represent concepts used to notice and orient self and other.
Whether as self-identification or as a label for groups and individuals,
disability is also a way to perceive and make sense of the bodies, minds,
senses, emotions, comportments, and even gestures of people. . . . To
conceive as something as disability can be understood as an oriented
act of perception, intimately tied to evaluation that guides interac-
tion. This orientation grounds the critical understanding that disability
should be regarded as that which exists between people; one cannot
be disabled alone. (p. 5)

In this framing, disability is an inherently relational, social matter; it is

something that happens, over and over, in interactions among people.
 disability justice/kumbier & starkey 473
When we think of disability in this way, our understanding of access needs
to also fundamentally shift. Access becomes more than solving problems,
making resources available, or putting the best, most usable system into
place.
Titchkosky’s theorization of disability and access can help librarians un-
derstand how the current Core Value of Access relies upon a traditional,
dominant logic. At present, Access, as conceptualized in the Core Values,
is something that users have or do not have. The library is positioned as
the arbiter of access for users. Titchkosky argues that when we (the collec-
tive we—social humans, in libraries and out in the world) think of access
as something one “has” or “personally needs,” the “idea that the world is
‘naturally’ for some and not for others is reproduced,” and it “seems ‘only
natural’ that some forms of embodied existence have trouble accessing
the stuff of daily life, such as it is,” while others (that is, people with dis-
abilities) are excluded (p. 6). Here is where our redefinition of the Core
Value of Access has the most at stake. As librarians interested in equity and
justice, we do not want to perpetuate an ideological system that naturalizes
the inclusion of some users and the exclusion of others because that is the
way things have “always” been.
When we think of disability as a problem to be solved or limit our think-
ing to ADA compliance, we miss opportunities to understand disability
in more nuanced ways and think more broadly about what creating ac-
cessible, inclusive libraries could mean. In order to expand our shared
understanding of disability beyond the ADA definition and the medical
model, we introduce a major concept in disability studies and activism: the
social model of disability.

The Social Model of Disability

While disability scholars and activists attend to individual experiences of
impairment, they also ask us to pay attention to the social dimensions
of disability. They assert that “disability” is not just a medical matter but
is also a socially constructed experience. Disability scholar-activist Mike
Oliver (1990) coined the phrase “social model of disability” to describe
this framework in which the focus shifts from individual persons’ medi-
cal diagnoses and impairments toward the material, physical, and social
environments that impose limitations or create barriers for people with
impairments. By reframing disability as an experience that is shaped by
social, cultural, historic, political, and economic factors, disability scholars
and activists are able to explore how these factors impact people’s lived
experience of impairment. Equally important, this reframing allows schol-
ars and activists to analyze the social practices that actively disable people:
marginalization, stigmatization, disenfranchisement, stereotyping, and
the perpetuation of inequitable living and working conditions. Thinking
about disability as an effect of power relations (Garland-Thomson, 2005,
p. 1557) means that we critically engage individual and collective experi-
474 library trends/winter 2016
ences of being disabled, the forces and practices that disable, and the op-
portunities to transform oppressive relations.
Disability studies scholarship demonstrates a commitment to theoriz-
ing the contexts and power relations that shape disability experiences.
During the 1980s and 1990s, disability studies grew from the work of ac-
tivists who transitioned into the academy. They investigated the political
and social dimensions of disability, focusing largely on analyses in the ar-
eas of public policy, social services, civil rights history, and sociology (Oli-
ver, 1983; Shapiro, 1994; Stone, 19842). Starting in the 1990s, humanities
scholars also gained prominence in the field. They theorized the impli-
cations of disability representations in different historical and cultural
contexts, exploring what happens when scholars take disability into ac-
count in their studies of embodiment, aesthetics, identity, normalcy,
citizenship, nationalism, and narrative (Davis, 1995; Garland-Thomson,
1996; Snyder, Brueggemann, & Garland-Thomson, 2002; Snyder & Mitch-
ell, 2006).
At the same time, critical disability autobiographies and memoirs en-
tered the academic landscape (Bérubé, 1998; Brownworth & Raffo, 1999;
Clare, 2009; Grealy, 1994; Lorde, 1982, 1996; Mairs, 1996; Wojnarowicz,
1991). The authors of these works give voice to their own experiences
and shape the terms of disability representation as cultural producers. In
a review of feminist disability studies literature that included a number
of autobiographies and memoirs, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson (2005,
p. 1582) suggests that this work encourages its readers to “reimagine more
deeply what it means to have a dynamic and distinct body that witnesses
its own perpetual interaction with the social and material environment.”
Importantly, these texts explore how their subjects’ disability experience
is also shaped by gender, race, sexuality, and class status. For example, in
Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation, Eli Clare (2009) pre-
sents his life story in relation to the ecological and economic environ-
ments he grew up in (working class in an Oregonian lumber town), mak-
ing it clear how his family’s working-class status, the different forms of
violence he experienced (structural, environmental, familial), and the
forests, rivers, and beaches where he found solace all contributed to his
growth and development. And he shares how communities of queer, femi-
nist, and disabled activists and comrades created spaces in which he feels
he belongs, crediting them with helping him proudly claim his embodi-
ment, heal from the sexual abuse and torture he experienced growing up,
and develop a radical, multi-issue politics.
Like Clare, disability studies scholars have also recognized the impor-
tance of exploring how disability intersects with other aspects of personal
or collective identities, embodiments, and contexts, and how power rela-
tions manifest at these intersections. They have examined how disability
experiences extend and complicate politics and modes of analysis in femi-
nist studies (Garland-Thomson, 1996, 2005; Hall, 2011; Wendell, 1996),
 disability justice/kumbier & starkey 475
queer theory (McRuer, 2006; Samuels, 2003), and African American stud-
ies (Bell, 2011). Recent work in the field has theorized disability as an as-
semblage, focusing on the relational and phenomenological nature of dis-
ability (Bost, 2010; Erevelles, 2011; Kafer, 2013; Titchkosky, 2011). These
analyses treat disability, race, sexuality, class, gender, and nationality as
categories that emerge through “events, actions, and encounters between
bodies” rather than as characteristics or attributes located in specific per-
sons (Jasbir Puar, cited in Kafer, 2013, p. 10), and bring material, political,
transnational, and economic concerns to bear on their analyses.
The literature we describe here, accompanied by survey-style antholo-
gies like The Disability Studies Reader (Davis, 2013) and Routledge Handbook
of Disability Studies (Watson, Roulstone, & Thomas, 2012), offer an orienta-
tion to the field of disability studies for the interested reader. The concept
of access that we propose in this paper is highly informed by this literature
and the work of disability activists. We have learned that thinking about
disability requires a “both/and” approach (a way of thinking indebted to
Chicana theorizations of third-space consciousness): librarians and library
workers need to recognize that disability is experienced by individuals in
specific ways, requiring particular (material) accommodations, and that
disability is a “fluid, contextual social relation” that exceeds technological
solutions, changes to a built environment, or better symbols of inclusion
(Ben-Moshe & Powell, 2007; Fritsch, 2013, p. 142; Licona, 2012).
In keeping with a both/and approach, we also remind readers that the
understanding of disability we have gleaned from the disability studies
literature is informed by and intertwined with what we have learned from
disability activists. We agree with disability studies scholar Nirmala Ere-
velles (2014), who argues that
[i]t is not possible to think with disability studies and not be account-
able to the actual material realities that are foregrounded in [activists’]
powerful and passionate writing on desire, struggle, pride, resistance,
revolution and pain. It is their work that has taught me to think with
disabilities and it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge the gen-
erosity of their labor that is sometimes appropriated by credentialed
academics with little acknowledgement or recognition of the conditions
within which this knowledge was produced. (n.p.)

Like Ervelles and other disability studies scholars, we build our argument
using tools and knowledges that have been offered to us by our academic
and activist comrades. We recognize the legitimacy and relevance of both
intellectual traditions in our work for access in libraries and encourage
others to value and draw on hybrid scholar-activist knowledges as well.

How Disability Is Conceptualized in the Library and Information

Science Literature
The understanding of disability as a social, relational entity both aligns
with and diverges from the ways it is presented in the professional-library
 476 library trends/winter 2016
literature and policy documents. At present the ALA addresses disability-
related policy and practice in a few different places. Although disability is
not explicitly named in any of the short Core Value statements, we find it
in the ALA Policy Manual (ALA Council, 2013) in sections on “Key Action
Areas for the Association” (part of a diversity goal, A.1.5); conference ar-
rangements for people with disabilities (A.7.1.3); library services to per-
sons with disabilities (B.2.1.20); principles for digitized content (part of
the equity and access section (B.4.6.2); equal opportunity employment
(B.9.3); and the policy on “Library Services for People with Disabilities”
(B.9.3.2). This last section concerning library services is the most exten-
sive section of the ALA Policy Manual dealing with disability. The policy
was submitted by the Association of Specialized and Cooperative Library
Agencies (ASCLA), an organization within the ALA that provides profes-
sional development and networking opportunities for librarians serving
“special populations,” advocates for universal access for all library users,
and publishes accessibility toolkits and standards for services to users with
disabilities (ASCLA, 2006). Also available on the ASCLA website, the pol-
icy opens with the statement:
The American Library Association recognizes that people with dis-
abilities are a large and neglected minority in the community and are
severely underrepresented in the library profession. Disabilities cause
many personal challenges. In addition, many people with disabilities
face economic inequity, illiteracy, cultural isolation, and discrimination
in education, employment and the broad range of societal activities.
Libraries play a catalytic role in the lives of people with disabilities
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by facilitating their full participation in society. Libraries should use

strategies based upon the principles of universal design to ensure that
library policy, resources and services meet the needs of all people.
(2001, n.p.)
The opening of this policy does some helpful rhetorical work: it recognizes
the challenges that people with disabilities face in accessing libraries—as
both patrons and workers; and it acknowledges the ways in which disabil-
ity experience has social, economic, and political stakes. The full policy
(beyond these introductory paragraphs) addresses the scope of disability
law, describes legal mandates and areas of compliance for libraries un-
der the ADA, and specifically names the ways in which services, facilities,
collections, technologies, employment, library education, professional
development, and ALA conferences and publications must or should be
made accessible. This is all good, although it is important to remember
that the work the policy performs is not in itself transformative, but de-
scriptive.
The Library Services for People with Disabilities policy, like the insti-
tutional diversity policies that feminist scholar and diversity worker Sara
Ahmed (2012) writes about in her work on institutional inclusion, both
documents the inequality of the profession and “becomes usable as a mea-
 disability justice/kumbier & starkey 477
sure of good performance” (p. 84). Documents like the ALA disabilities
policy can identify benchmarks for change, and in general terms suggest
what practical changes are necessary to meet those benchmarks. It is im-
portant to remember that policies are not substitutes for action (p. 101).
As Ahmed observes, sometimes the production of diversity-related policy
documents produces a “‘marshmallow feeling,’ a feeling that we are do-
ing enough, or doing well enough, or even that there is nothing left to
do” (p. 101). The document can function as evidence that the problem
(diversity—or in our case inaccessibility) is taken care of because it has
been thought about, addressed, and codified in an official, documented
way. Even when it is clear that writing and endorsing an organizational
policy document is not enough, the manner in which a policy is written
can shape the ways that people think about its subject and the kinds of
action the policy promotes. While the Core Values statement on Access
and the Library Services for People with Disabilities policy aim for more
than compliance (this is evident in the disability policy in the sections
that include guidelines for what libraries “should” do, in addition to what
they legally “must” do), they still encourage what Ahmed calls a “tick-box
approach” (p. 106) to the problem of disability. In such a “tick-box” frame-
work, what matters most is meeting specific, measurable goals and treat-
ing a given concern—for example, diversity or accessibility—as a problem
to be solved through reaching performance indicators. In other words,
the assumption is that when we have done things A, B, and C, we have
achieved diversity or accessibility and hence are free to go about our busi-
ness as usual with a clear collective conscience.
Like the Core Values statement and the ALA disabilities policy, the
professional literature treats accessibility mostly as a matter of finding
the right solutions to problems faced by patrons with disabilities who
navigate our systems and access our materials; for example, services for
users with vision impairments. It is not difficult to find smart, helpful,
practical, and up-to-date recommendations for best practices for adap-
tive technologies—tools that help users with disabilities access informa-
tion resources both inside the brick-and-mortar structure of the library
and beyond (Booth, 2012; Brown & Freund, 2010; Guder, 2010; Mates
& Booth, 2012). As Heather Hill (2013) found in her content analysis of
disability and accessibility in the library and information science (LIS) lit-
erature, much of the literature focuses on electronic accessibility (p. 139).
A quarter of the articles that Hill analyzed focused on web, database, and
software accessibility, and the three other most popular themes for articles
were services to persons with disabilities, program or project descriptions,
and product descriptions. Her study confirmed earlier analyses that found
that “there is little actual research focused on disabilities,” and that “much
of the literature is focused on describing difficulties and recommending
solutions” (p. 140). The focus of this literature aligns with a larger social
478 library trends/winter 2016
framework for understanding disability as a problem. Titchkosky (2011)
reminds us that while this is the dominant, naturalized way of thinking
about disability, there are alternatives. She suggests that members of in-
stitutions do more than focus on solving the problems that impairment
and disability present to us: members should also “begin to study how it is
that these bodies, minds, or senses have been made sense of as problems”
(p. 135). If we think about disability in ways that do not focus on the prob-
lems to be solved, then we move away from thinking about disability as an
object for research, as something to be quantified or known, as a factor
to be entered into cost-benefit analyses, and as a troublesome glitch in
the otherwise smooth, efficient operations of a system run by able-bodied
workers.
There is evidence that library workers mean well and that they try to
work within the existing frameworks for understanding disability (as a
problem) to provide services to users. To readers who are not accustomed
to thinking of disability as something other than a problem to be solved,
the library literature suggests that the profession is doing well by our pa-
trons when it comes to identifying accessibility barriers and providing solu-
tions to them. For example, Services for Users with Disabilities, an Association
of Research Libraries (ARL) SPEC kit, includes well over a hundred pages’
worth of exemplary library policies of services to users with disabilities,
and reprints of individual ARL member libraries’ web pages enumerating
the specific tools, services, and pathways through which users can gain
access to library resources and adaptive technologies (Brown & Freund,
2010). It is easy to imagine from library disability-services pages and the
literature that libraries are anticipating and responding to the needs of
people with disabilities. It would seem that libraries are doing well if they
are delivering all that they promise on their websites and in their profes-
sional literature. However, while this emphasis in the literature is helpful,
it does not attend to the larger structural, systemic, or social transforma-
tions that could enable access for people with disabilities. This literature
treats access as a matter of many minor adjustments and fixes and, like
the university disability-services statements that Titchkosky (2011) studies,
reiterates the idea that disability is “a personal need which requires evalu-
ation, services, or counseling, rather than collective action or exploration,
[and] requires us to engage disability in individualized terms” (p. 12). By
focusing on solving individual users’ problems and positioning the library
as able to provide services to users on its own terms (namely, encouraging
patrons to submit specific documented needs, with libraries responding
on a case-by-case basis), the literature does not attend to the larger struc-
tural, systemic, or social transformations that could enable access for all
users; in other words this literature treats access as a matter of many minor
adjustments and fixes rather than a sustained commitment to evaluating
what access means for all users.
 disability justice/kumbier & starkey 479
Another constraint inherent in the literature has to do with who has
been involved in its production. As Hill (2013, p. 141) observes, “there
is limited information in the research coming directly from people with
disabilities.” In our research for this paper, we found only a few articles
that (re)present or analyze users with disabilities’ perspectives, the most
extensive of which was Clayton Copeland’s (2011a) qualitative study “Li-
brary and Information Center Accessibility: The Differently-able Patron’s
Perspective.” This study models a socially oriented, critical-theoretical
approach to studying library accessibility—exploring how dominant at-
titudes and assumptions about disability inform library services and ac-
cessibility, and how patrons who are “differently-able” (Copeland’s pre-
ferred terminology to recognize patrons’ abilities) navigate library spaces,
systems, and services—and makes recommendations for further research
and accessibility-praxis within the profession.
Copeland’s work with differently-able patrons as research informants
and study participants is still unusual in the field. In her content analysis
of the LIS literature, Hill (2013) found that only 36 percent of research
articles involved participants with disabilities, all of whom were engaged
in “either information-seeking or accessibility-testing research” (p. 140).
This means that the majority of research being conducted in these areas,
within the profession, is being conducted with able-bodied researchers.
Using the following example, Hill illustrates a major reason why it is im-
portant to involve users with disabilities in research:
The predominant approach to testing accessibility is to have fully able-
bodied researchers perform testing. While this approach is perhaps
quicker, it may make for cases of token accessibility over true accessibil-
ity. Even if an environment is deemed to be accessible based on current
standards, there can still be a gap between technically-accessible and
user-friendly. Research has shown that able-bodied participants who
test for general standards can still miss accessibility challenges. (p. 141)

Hill’s argument for the involvement of users with disabilities in accessibil-

ity testing is important not just because it means that the results of those
tests would be more accurate but also because involvement of users in
these projects is a way of building connections with disability communities
and recognizing the value of distinct user perspectives.
Hill’s example of the difference between the experiences of users with
disabilities and nondisabled users also resonates with Ahmed’s (2012)
observation about how the experience of inaccessability—in her work, en-
countering (metaphorical) “brick walls”—is different if one has not ex-
perienced obstacles. She writes that diversity workers (like users with dis-
abilities) develop a critical orientation to access through the experience
of “coming up against” particular brick walls, arguing that “[t]o those who
do not come up against it, the wall does not appear—the institution [or, in
our case, the library website, space, or resource] is lived and experienced
 480 library trends/winter 2016
as being open, committed, and diverse” (p. 174). For able-bodied users,
the experience of participating in a usability test may be reassuring—and
may offer an opportunity to have that “marshmallow feeling” by participat-
ing in an effort to make things better for users with disabilities (replicat-
ing a problematic hierarchy of doing for which emerges in that moment).
But the able-bodied user does not bring a bigger picture into the testing
scenario; an able-bodied person “wearing a blindfold to ‘experience blind-
ness’ suggests that the only thing there is to learn about blindness is what
it feels like to move around in the dark. The meaning of blindness . . . is
completely encapsulated in the experience of wearing a blindfold” (Kafer,
2013, pp. 4–5). However, users with disabilities may bring to the testing
scenario knowledges, workarounds, and ways of completing tasks that
able-bodied users have never had to develop or have not learned by being
in community with other people with disabilities. This rich experiential
knowledge is lost when users with disabilities are not involved in the re-
search process.
There is another critically important group concerned with access (and
equity as well) within the profession, a group of people who barely ap-
pear in the research or literature: librarians with disabilities. Our research
confirmed what Ed Garcia, Arianne Hartsell-Gundy, Jessica Hernández,
J. Porcaro, and Jennifer Walker (2010) observe, that
it is difficult to give definite numbers related to the number of people
who have disabilities and even harder to get data related to the number
of librarians who have disabilities. . . . Professional associations such
[[Link]] Project MUSE (2025-10-30 19:06 GMT) University of Arizona

as the American Library Association do not systematically collect this

information. Most of the data that has been gathered is self-reported,
and some people hesitate to disclose a disabling condition. (p. 6)

The literature searches we performed when researching this paper yielded

very few articles about the experiences or perspectives of people with dis-
abilities working in libraries, whether as professional librarians or as staff
(Barlow, 1995; Copeland, 2011b; Johnstone, 2005; Sager, Bruni, Davis, &
Robinson, 1998; Ziglar, 2006).
The articles we found on librarians with disabilities focused on the
personal and professional narratives of individual library workers with
disabilities who had succeeded in completing their professional educa-
tion, getting hired, and making significant contributions to their organi-
zations or institutions. Stories like these can be inspiring and informative
for people with disabilities who are considering becoming librarians or
library workers; additionally, they can help change the belief that people
with disabilities cannot or should not work in libraries. But these accounts
do not appear regularly enough, nor are they published widely enough,
to significantly alter popular perceptions. Articles focused on personal
accounts sustain a focus on disability as an individualized phenomenon,
and librarians with disabilities as exceptional cases, rather than analyz-
 disability justice/kumbier & starkey 481
ing access to the profession in terms of structural or systemic inequalities
(Bourg, 2014).
This is a moment when it is helpful to remember the both/and ap-
proach to thinking about access and accessibility. It can be informative
and useful to learn how individual people have negotiated their experi-
ence with disability while working in libraries and to get a sense of how
libraries can accommodate workers with particular disabilities or condi-
tions. But if we tell these stories over and over again and do not consider
how to change the terms of access to the profession or the way we think
about disability in the profession, we will not get beyond the “tick-box” ap-
proach to realizing our professional values of access and equity.

A Transformative Value of Access

One way to transform our collective, professional understanding of Access
and move beyond individually focused, problem-focused ways of thinking
about disability in the profession is to engage the framework of collective ac-
cess. The notion of collective access, articulated by activists like Mia Mingus
(2010a, 2010b), understands disability as intertwined with other aspects
of embodiment and lived experience, and thus connects disability justice
activism with antiracist, feminist, reproductive justice, queer, and prison
abolitionist movements. The framework of collective access also centers
solidarity and interdependence—on these terms, creating access is a shared
responsibility and requires a shift in thinking. Instead of understanding
access as the result of specific accommodations for individuals, collective
access focuses on developing strategies for practicing mutual interdepen-
dence and supporting access for communities. We highlight here some
tenets of disability justice and collective access frameworks that are par-
ticularly relevant to libraries and librarianship.

“Nothing about Us without Us”: Community-Informed Access and

Professional Participation
The popular disability justice slogan “nothing about us without us,” which
has been an organizing concept for disability rights activists since the early
1990s, centers the social and political experience of disability (Charlton,
1998, p. 17). Its central demand is that the people most affected by a
given policy or practice should participate in authoring, designing, and/
or setting the terms on which it will be enacted. “Nothing about us without
us” argues that people with disabilities should be involved in decisions
regarding disability in many arenas: in the creation of accessible material
and social environments; in the care and treatment that intimately affect
our livelihoods; and around policies and legislation at multiple levels. At
its fullest realization “nothing about us without us” also implies leadership
by people with disabilities—not simply participation. Reading the call that
the Creating Collective Access (2010) organizers put out to fellow “crips
482 library trends/winter 2016
and allies/comrades” in their inaugural organizing moment,3 it is clear
that they foreground a collective approach in their work, led by people
with disabilities:
We are disabled and chronically ill queer women of color who will be
in Detroit this summer attending the Allied Media Conference (AMC)
and the United States Social Forum (USSF). We are working to create
collective access for crips in Detroit.
We envision a community-built-and-led collective access network of
crips and our allies/comrades working to help each other to create and
practice the kind of access, community and crip love that we know is
possible! We want to help create access for us in ways that also builds
community, care, crip solidarity, solidarity with non-disabled comrades
and is led by crips! We want to stretch and think about collective ac-
cess, resisting against the individualization of access in our world and
movements. (n.p.)

In the context of librarians’ Core Value of Access, “nothing about us with-

out us” can usefully frame our thinking as we imagine how we could enable
access to more than our materials and live up to the promise of a profes-
sional commitment to access in many forms. What could fuller participa-
tion and leadership by people with disabilities mean for the profession? In
the sections that follow, we suggest how transformative the conceptualiza-
tion of Access might translate into practice.

Recruit, Educate, Hire, and Support Library Workers with Disabilities

To make our profession accessible and equitable, members need to make
practical commitments to equitable hiring and training or education for
people with disabilities who are interested in working in libraries at any
level—as staff, librarians, or administrators. Fortunately, a model for de-
veloping, funding, and implementing a scholars’ program, similar to the
Spectrum Scholars, though with a focus on people with disabilities, al-
ready exists in the form of a 2010 “Emerging Leaders” report for ASCLA
(Garcia et al., 2010). Among its recommendations are recruiting students
with disabilities, and those interested in serving people with disabilities,
into LIS master’s degree programs; pairing students with mentors in their
area of professional interest; providing tuition scholarships and funding
to attend ALA conferences; encouraging student participation in a profes-
sional learning community; and promoting students’ leadership develop-
ment and networking activities (pp. 9–12). These proposed actions foster
equitable access to the profession by offering financial and social support,
facilitating the professional connections and mentoring essential for ca-
reer development, and recognizing the leadership potential of librarians
with disabilities. The proposal cannot be implemented at present because
for a program like this to work, ALA would need to expand ASCLA’s staff
(and we call on it to do so). It is, at the very least, encouraging to know
that emerging leaders have already identified access to the profession for
 disability justice/kumbier & starkey 483
people with disabilities as a critical issue facing libraries and have dem-
onstrated what an equity-minded approach that education, hiring, and
retention for people with disabilities would entail.

Engage People with Disabilities (Users and Nonusers) in Our Planning,

Decision-Making, and Service-Design Activities
Increasing the number of library workers with disabilities is not enough
to fulfill the promise of “nothing about us without us.” In order to un-
derstand how users with disabilities access and experience library spaces,
services, and resources, we need to ask them; in order to understand the
barriers to access for people who are not users, we also need to conduct
outreach and research with people with disabilities in our local commu-
nities to understand why they are not already users and how the library
may become accessible for them. In her study on differently-able patrons,
Copeland (2011a) provides a model of the kinds of questions that librar-
ies could ask of their patrons. She asked her participants about the in/
accessibility of three different types of libraries (in which they all had ex-
periences), about how accessibility to these libraries could improve, about
the perceptions of LIS professionals toward differently-able patrons, and
whether (and if so, how) negative perceptions held by LIS professionals
could be changed and improved so as to better serve differently-able pa-
trons. Copeland’s questions exemplify the both/and approach to access
that we employ in this paper: she asks her respondents to talk about the
logistical aspects of making libraries accessible and the attitudinal barriers
to service that patrons may experience, thus providing readers with the in-
formation about material and social transformations necessary to improve
access for all patrons.

Publish Perspectives of People with Disabilities and Disability Studies Scholars in

the Professional Literature
While our literature review demonstrated that members of the profession
care about accessibility of library resources and are developing frame-
works and best practices for assistive technologies, we and other research-
ers (Copeland, 2011a; Hill, 2013) found that the literature did not feature
many narratives, perspectives, or authorial voices of library users or library
workers and librarians with disabilities. LIS literature has the potential to
amplify the voices of users who do not usually get to comment on, or effect
changes to, aspects of accessibility that are more symbolic than material,
but that have very real consequences. Amelia Koford’s (2014) recent study
of how disability studies scholars interact with Library of Congress classifi-
cation schemes and subject headings is a helpful example of how research
can bring users’ voices, experiences, and knowledges into the literature.
In her article Koford goes beyond a disability studies–informed critique
of the subject headings and represents the responses that scholars have to
 484 library trends/winter 2016
the subject headings as they encounter them, and describes the scholars’
strategies for negotiating the limitations and biases of nonpreferred ter-
minology. The scholars’ observations and practices not only provide feed-
back on subject headings and knowledge-organization practices but also
highlight opportunities for critical library instruction around disability-re-
lated research in the process. By conducting her research with participants
who have significant experience searching for critical interdisciplinary
scholarship in disability studies (instead of looking for clinical or medical
literature on disabilities, conditions, or illnesses), Koford raises awareness
of a perspective on disability that many librarians may not possess.

Think Intersectionally about Access

While the focus of this paper is making libraries accessible for people with
disabilities, it is crucial to remain aware of how disability intersects with
other aspects of people’s identities and embodiments, and to remember
that systems of privilege and oppression often work in tandem. We agree
with the organizers of Creating Collective Access that it is important “not
just [to] think about disability as separate from class, age, race, queerness,
family, children, gender, citizenship, violence, but . . . [to] understand it as
intimately connected” (Mingus, 2010b, n.p.). People experience the lived
realities of their disabilities in different ways. For example, people who
share a diagnosis may have very different experiences of access to treat-
ment, education, employment, and social services based on their class,
race, citizenship, and geographic location. Like many of our other user
[[Link]] Project MUSE (2025-10-30 19:06 GMT) University of Arizona

groups, there is diversity within the category of “people with disabilities,”

and one set of accommodations will not necessarily work for everyone.
If we only involve white people with disabilities in our collaborations,
for example, we will not develop approaches to access that respond to the
different histories of oppression, contemporary microaggressions, and
other practices that privilege some groups (and assume the benefits of
privilege that accrue for members of those groups) over others. In her
work on intersectional librarianship, Fobazi Ettarh (2014) explains why
we cannot assume that white people who experience a particular kind of
oppression can speak or make recommendations for others in that group.
She analyzes recent writing by white librarians who advise others experi-
encing discrimination based on gender or sexuality to “lean in,” be their
“whole selves” at work, act as advocates for themselves in the workplace.
While the authors’ advice is designed to be empowering and helpful,
Ettarh observes that

these conversations are instigated by people from white, middle-class

backgrounds and are grounded in their experiences of privilege. This
is unsurprising: most of the field falls within this demographic. It can
be more dangerous for POC [people of color] to speak up or “lean in”
at the workplace. Compounded with other identities such as disability
 disability justice/kumbier & starkey 485
or gender, to visibly be their whole selves can seem impossible. Fear
of job loss or not hiring; fear of not being allowed to use appropriate
restrooms; or even fear of physical violence are just a few of the very
real issues that are swept under the rug when loud and explicit advocacy
are offered as blanket advice. The “Lean In” advice is, in fact, about
how to have it all, while offering precisely zero guidance on how to
dismantle the structural barriers to gender equity that still impede most
women. Not only does the “Lean In” and “Speak Out” advice ignore
structural barriers such as racial discrimination and poverty, it ignores
the different cultural views of women. When a white woman negotiates
and advocates for herself she is seen as “greedy, demanding or just not
very nice” and “people report that they would be less inclined to work
with them, be it as coworkers, subordinates, or bosses.” However, when
a woman of color, and especially a black woman, advocates for herself,
not only does she have to contend with all of the negative associations
the white woman faces, [but] additionally, it is seen as anger or being
“uppity,” also known as the “Angry Black Woman” stereotype. So when
POC, especially women of color, express similar ideas it’s not seen
as an expression of confidence and leadership, but rather insolence
and insubordination, and part of the “Angry Black Woman” or “Spicy
Latina” stereotypes. (n.p.)

Reading Ettarh’s example, it is possible to imagine how librarians or

patrons of color who also have disabilities would be wary of making the
same kinds of requests their white coworkers and peers would make. All li-
brarians and library workers do not experience the workplace in the same
way, and it is possible—especially when other kinds of power relations are
in effect—that two workers with the same impairment might be treated
differently by coworkers or patrons. If librarians bring an intersectional
approach to our access praxis and we can learn how our own biases and
privileges affect our interactions with our coworkers and patrons, then
we can foster an intersectional framework in our collaborations with us-
ers and develop programs, services, and strategies based on what we have
learned through these collaborations.

Access and Equity Require Challenging the Status Quo and Dismantling Ableism
When we bring the framework of collective access into conversations with
conventional library understandings of access, one of the biggest shifts we
make is from thinking about accessibility as a matter of problem solving at
the “tick-box” level to accessibility as part of a larger project to dismantle
ableism in our libraries. When we conceptualize access in this way, we
are asking libraries to understand it as an ongoing project, one that will
transform our profession and organizations in ways we cannot anticipate.
In her essay “Reflection toward Practice: Some Questions on Disability
Justice,” Mingus (2014) offers a set of questions that groups and organiza-
tions interested in doing the work of disability justice can ask of themselves
as they collaborate or partner with people with disabilities and members
of other nonprivileged/nondominant groups. We suggest that these ques-
486 library trends/winter 2016
tions can be used to frame outreach and engagement work in libraries.
Examples of the list of questions that Mingus recommends we ask include
the following:
• Why does disability justice matter? To you, to your community, to our
struggles for justice and liberation?
• Is your motivation more about “bringing disabled people to our table”
(or just making “your work accessible”), rather than a true effort to
challenge and dismantle ableism and able-bodied supremacy in your
organization/community (which could very well mean a shifting of
your current priorities and work)?
• Do you have disabled people of color with lived experience and politi-
cal depth of understanding of disability justice in supported and valued
leadership? [Not] just token disabled people who won’t challenge the
status quo?
• Why are you committed to ending ableism and able-bodied supremacy?
How can you work towards ending ableism and able-bodied supremacy
[in] your current work? How does your current work perpetuate ableism
and able-bodied supremacy? (2014, pp. 112–-113)
Reading just this selection of Mingus’s questions, we can imagine the
very different conversations we could have about access in libraries. What
if the Core Value of Access was defined not only by the librarians of the
ALA Council but in conversation with our users, especially those who have
experienced a variety of barriers? What if, following Titchkosky (2011,
p. 4), we did not conceptualize access as something that one has or does
not but as something that happens among people, in space and time, over
and over again? What if we did not just think about access in terms of re-
sources but also in terms of participation in libraries? How can we ensure
that the professional “we” (the membership), who commits to our Core
Values, is truly diverse and inclusive? And what material resources will we
dedicate to render participation in the profession and our libraries equi-
table? These questions are points of departure, part of a praxis of access
that grows from asking questions, what Titchkosky describes as a “politics
of wonder” (p. 16). When we ask questions about how libraries came to be
the way they are and how librarians have come to know about disability,
we can examine how our beliefs and attitudes have shaped relationships,
workforces, and services in our libraries, identify ways by which to inter-
vene in the present, and imagine together what a transformative, collec-
tive commitment to access involves.

Physical Access (Still) Matters

Finally, we still need to get into the building, to have access to the bath-
rooms, to be able to maneuver through the stacks, and to work at desks
 disability justice/kumbier & starkey 487
or workstations that are healthy for us. We cannot access information or
transform the profession if we cannot get in the door.
In their introduction to a recent issue of Disability Studies Quarterly de-
voted to “Growing Disability Studies,” disability studies scholars Michelle
Jarman and Alison Kafer (2014) advocate for theorizing, questioning, and
thinking about access while also keeping pragmatic concerns in mind.
As those of us who work in libraries develop strategies for imagining and
implementing an expanded concept of Access as a Core Value, we should
pursue questions aligned with those that Jarman and Kafer pose:

We are troubled by the possibility . . . that schools, colleges, and uni-

versities can develop disability studies courses and programming with-
out simultaneously pushing for increase access for disabled students.
What does it mean to teach disability studies courses on campuses
with inaccessible buildings or with faculty and administrators who are
unsympathetic, even hostile, to accessibility concerns and requests for
accommodations? Or to tout disability studies courses and program-
ming while simultaneously holding students’ ableist expectations of
time and self-sufficiency, refusing to offer accommodations or sham-
ing students for asking “too much”? What does it mean to divorce
questions of physical access from questions of economic access? . . . Can
we . . . demand that the growth of the field be accompanied by a growth
in access (and “access” understood broadly, radically), making space
for more students and faculty to participate fully in their universities,
regardless of their disability identifications, both within disability stud-
ies and beyond? (n.p.)

Jarman and Kafer do more than model a way of thinking that we can
adapt for libraries: they also invite collaboration between scholars and
librarians. Reading through this list of concerns, library workers might
identify opportunities for outreach—specifically, ways that they might
partner with disability studies scholars and activists on their campuses or
in their communities, with students and faculty with disabilities, and with
offices of disability services, financial aid, and physical facilities to imag-
ine and implement multidimensional approaches to access on campus.
Taking this even further, we suggest that local disability activists and com-
munities of people with disabilities can join the conversation, offering the
perspectives of those who may have already completed postsecondary edu-
cation or been denied access to local institutions. Thinking about access
in this way creates a space in which librarians can foster new relationships
and strengthen the library’s integration in its community.

Conclusion
In proposing an approach to Access that centers equity and justice, we
align ourselves with others in the profession who recognize the promise
of a critical return to our Core Values. When we render our libraries ac-
 488 library trends/winter 2016
cessible in ways that exceed access to information, we also contribute to
the enactment of values like diversity and social responsibility. As Myrna
Morales, Em Claire Knowles, and Chris Bourg (2014) assert in their work
on diversity and social justice in academic libraries,
To truly embrace our social responsibility for promoting social justice,
librarians and library leaders must . . . acknowledge the ways in which
library practices frequently contribute to inequity, marginalization, and
injustices; and commit to transforming our practices and standards in
ways that leverage the power, expertise, and responsibility of academic
librarians and libraries as forces for social justice. (p. 448)

A truly transformative approach to access involves examining the power

relations that have created and sustained the conditions in which we work,
that have enabled some people to become librarians and not others, and
that have allowed us to consistently exclude members of our communities,
and, in collaboration with people with disabilities, imagining how things
could be otherwise and working toward our shared, expanded notion of
access.

Notes
1. We use the phrase people with disabilities (instead of disabled people or the handicapped) to
foreground the subjectivity and personhood of people living with physical impairments,
chronic illnesses, psychosocial disabilities, and cognitive/intellectual disabilities.
2. For a thorough bibliography of very early disability studies work concerning attitudes
toward people with disabilities, see Elaine Makas (1981).
3. Crip is a term that some disability activists and scholars have claimed to resignify the histori-
[[Link]] Project MUSE (2025-10-30 19:06 GMT) University of Arizona

cal (and derogatory) cripple, in a rhetorical move akin to the reclamation and resignification
of queer by people who identify as queer.

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Alana Kumbier is the critical social inquiry and digital pedagogy librarian at Hamp-
shire College, Amherst. She is the author of Ephemeral Material: Queering the Archive
(2014) and coeditor of Critical Library Instruction: Theories and Methods (2010). Her
work has been published in Critical Journeys: How 14 Librarians Came to Embrace Criti-
cal Practice; and Make Your Own History: Documenting Feminist and Queer Activism in
the 21st Century. She is currently working on Zine Scenes, a digital humanities project
focused on 1990s feminist and queer zines and the subcultures in which they were
produced and circulated.
 disability justice/kumbier & starkey 491
Julia Starkey is a technology loving librarian who has worked for over 10 years in
academic libraries. She received a B.A. from Harvard University in folklore and
mythology and an MLIS from Simmons College. Her work has appeared in Lessons
from the Fat-o-Sphere, authored by Marianne Kirby and Kate Harding; The WisCon
Chronicles, Vol. 3: Carnival of Feminist SF, edited by Liz Henry; The WisCon Chronicles,
Vol. 4: Voices of WisCon, edited by Sylvia Kelso; The WisCon Chronicles Vol. 5: Writing and
Racial Identity, edited by Nisi Shawl; The WisCon Chronicles, Vol. 6: Futures of Feminism
and Fandom, edited by Alexis Lothian; and The Journal of Transformative Works, Vol.
3, “Pattern Recognition: A dialogue on race in fandom communities.” She has been
involved with accessibility initiatives at the WisCon convention, including writing
documentation and policies that are used as models of accessibility best practices at
other conventions.