Accessibility as a ‘doing’: the everyday production of Santiago de Chile's public transport system as an accessible infrastructure

Abstract

This paper seeks to expand mainstream descriptions of accessibility as a characteristic of materialities and infrastructures, inscribed into them at the design stage. Instead, it explores accessibility as a practice. That is, as the outcome of ongoing everyday interactions taking place between disabled and non-disabled users encountering materialities and accessibility-oriented protocols. Accessibility is framed as a relational achievement in which the practical action of those who routinely navigate public transport infrastructures locally enact heterogeneous landscapes of accessibility. The paper draws on qualitative data of disabled people using the public transport system of Santiago de Chile. Through an ethnomethodological analysis of video recordings and ethnographic work, the interaction between disabled and non-disabled passengers and infrastructures is put in context, revealing the embodied skills and interactional work that people do in order to enact accessible situations for themselves and for others.