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Access Check-Ins For Facilitators: Reinvent the Wheel Every Time

by The Curiosity Paradox

Revision 1.0, Friday May 12th 2023


The Curiosity Paradox is the co-led Access Art practice of Grant Miller and Jonathan Paradox Lee. Access Art is an evolving definition which describes the ways marginalized people and communities creatively grow resources, design accessibility, celebrate joy and resistance, out-maneuver supremacy culture, and dream worlds beyond the impossible. This article was written in response to colleagues telling us of Access Check-Ins that have become boring or draining. As people who use Access Check-Ins a lot in daily, personal, creative, and professional life, we offer this article to revitalize Access Check-Ins, and redirect people to the desire path carved by multiply-marginalized Disabled leaders.

Facilitation Is A Way of Sharing Power

What do you need to enjoy this text? A few slow breaths? Some water? A place to take notes? A few minutes of humming? A read-aloud version? This is an invitation to interrupt the flow of how you usually learn new skills, and check in with your needs before moving forward. We can pause.

In our practice at The Curiosity Paradox, we follow the thought that a facilitator’s job is not to force a group to complete its desired task as fast as possible, but to craft a space where the group can move together toward shared goals. This is an important responsibility.

Many barriers can stop a group from achieving its collective goals. A major barrier we want to address with this guide is Ableism.

Ableism is the system of assigning value to people's bodies and minds based on societally constructed ideas of normalcy, productivity, desirability, intelligence, excellence, and fitness. These constructed ideas are deeply rooted in eugenics, anti-Blackness, misogyny, colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism. (This definition was created by Disabled activist TL Lewis in collaboration with other activists.)

In meetings, many rules are unsaid, hidden, and accepted as normal. Sometimes these are customs, norms, or cultural ways of being together that are considered wrong to challenge. For example, how quickly people talk, how loud people talk, who talks the most, who is allowed to interrupt, whether it is okay to take a bathroom break or eat, who is allowed to disagree, and how decisions are made, etc.

A meeting is oppressive when people who are marginalized are denied access to power and are not allowed to negotiate the rules of the meeting. It can be felt when people are talked over, denied the opportunity to take care of their bodies, and when Disabled and marginalized people are not allowed to participate in implicit and explicit ways because their needs conflict with the way things are “supposed to go.”

When ableism sets the rules for how people work together, its impacts are destructive. Burnout, resentment, and dishonesty thrive. Productivity gets put before people, and the drive for perfectionism drowns out pleasure, innovation, and possibility.

When we resist ableism as facilitators, we make room for creative possibility, the joy of making things together, and a culture of love that is always evolving to learn from mistakes.

Cut Through Ableism With The Access Check-In

Facilitating Access Check-Ins gives space for people to name access needs which may differ from the current setting. They can also help folks realize the needs they have which have already been met.

An Access Check-In is a practice that comes from Disability Culture and the Disability Justice Movement. It is done in many different ways depending on where it is facilitated and who is meant to benefit.

While Access Check-Ins cannot solve all oppression, they can cut through the unspoken ways non-Disabled people and ableist culture control a space to make room for play, enjoyment, and empowerment. They can make it possible to center the needs of people present, and shift power dynamics so marginalized people are invited to participate in deciding how things are done. Done well, Access Check-Ins allow for the impossible to move from the unimaginable into the here and now.

Access Check-In As Serious Game

Think of a game you know well, but whose rules change depending on who you play it with.

For example, you may know how to play hide-and-seek, but the way you play it will be different if you are a child in school rather than an adult playing in a forest with friends. It is possible for the same game to have entirely different rules depending on who teaches it, who plays it, who is in charge, and what seems most fun to the group.

An Access Check-In can be a game with a specific purpose. It was created by Disabled and marginalized people to make space more joyous for ourselves, treat each other with dignity, and work towards goals while interrupting oppressive cultural norms.

The Basic Chorus

Let’s pretend an Access Check-In is a song we sing together with a group around a campfire, and it is partly improvised. The chorus of the song—the main part of the song people learn every time it’s repeated—is how we start.

Usually, when we are among our folks, an Access Check-In will start something like this:

“Let’s do a quick Access Check-In. Are there any needs you want to share that will make it easier for you to participate?”

It might vary to, “We’re gonna start with an Access Check-In. Is there anything you would like the group to know that will let you take part more fully?”

Like any open-ended prompt, it’s helpful to consider the collective culture of your gathering and give guidelines:

“We have about 10 minutes for an Access Check-In, so please consider being as concise as possible.”

Sometimes, when we are more familiar with each other we might just say, “Access Check-In?” Lots of non-Disabled people have quick ways of checking to find out if people’s needs are met, but this practice was always designed to enhance joy and access for Disabled and marginalized folks then feel the joy reverberate out.

We may invite an Access Check-In prompt once at the start of an event. Or, we may repeat Access Check-Ins many times. How we do them will change. If done well, we develop unique forms of intimacy based on who is present and change our exact words to match the group. Eventually, others around you will learn how to do it and pick it up over time as it is repeated.

The Verses

In folk music, the verses are the words of the song before or after the chorus. They sometimes tell a story, or fill in details about the words of the chorus. For an Access Check-In, everyone is invited to share their Access Needs with the group, which may include a request. Like the lyrics of folk song verses, some needs may be new to everyone else in the group. When we practice together, we do our best to meet them.

Some examples of what people might share in an Access Check-In:

  • A need for people to talk slower.

  • A need for participants to mute their computers when they aren’t talking in virtual meetings. Or option to turn cameras off or on.

  • A need to drink water or eat.

  • A need to take a break to get water or go to the bathroom before beginning a meeting.

  • An emerging need to leave the meeting early without announcement or to ask the facilitator to change the agenda.

Each time a new person shares an Access Need, it is an opportunity to change the way the group is doing things together.

An Access Check-In reshapes time, space, agendas, relationship between bodies, and more. When folks share a need to make participation easier, they interrupt ableism. 

Such as:

  • A need for the lights to be dimmed or turned off.

  • A need for people to say their name before they speak.

  • A need for a few dollars for gas money, or to cover a gap in rent.

  • A need to make ouch faces, and for people to not assume it’s about the conversation topic or a request for help.

  • A need to go outside because the weather is so good and being indoors makes it too hard to be together.

  • A need to lay down or walk around during the meeting.

Depending on who you are with, Access Check-Ins can become a way to invite embodiment, creativity, and play into the space. One amazing result of Access Check-Ins is when people realize someone shared a need they never knew they could ask for. These might include:

  • A need to wiggle, or stim and move around.

  • A need to call Access Check-Ins “Access Chickens.”

  • A need for backgrounds in virtual meetings with cats or gorgeous pictures of the stars.

  • A need to put on some fabulous clothing before, during, or after the meeting.

  • A need to make the sounds of tweeting birds.

Sometimes, when going around the circle during an Access Check-In, people are tempted to say “I don’t have any needs.” Many of us are often taught to hide our needs, or act like they don’t matter. However, we all have an endless supply of needs: water, air, food, beauty, etc.

Often, if people say they don’t have any needs during an Access Check-In, they are usually letting the group know that their needs are met. Non-disabled people are often so used to having their needs met they forget they have needs at all, let alone how spaces are often designed to accommodate their needs.

Many of us have also been forced to hide our needs so we can survive. Another way to disrupt ableism is to invite people whose needs are met to say, “all my needs are met right now” rather than “I don’t have any needs.”

Throughout and after the Access Check-In, the work of the group is to continue to meet the needs of those present. It can feel like a balancing game to try and do things people ask. Sometimes it is hard. If someone makes a mistake, like forgetting to do a visual description of themselves, you can lovingly remind the group of the request. Resist the urge to police others, or single out the person whose need was not being met. When we fail, we can remind each other to keep going, with love.

Like an opening ceremony or an opening song at a sports game, Access Check-Ins can be a helpful way to open gatherings, particularly small ones like team meetings, or friendly get togethers to gather a group’s focus. An Access Check-In can also be something someone from the audience of an event introduces as a way of intervening in an inaccessible situation.

Keep The Wheel Turning

When a wheel stops spinning smoothly, it may need changes or repairs to keep going. A spoke might break and need fixing. Maybe the axle needs some grease, maybe the wheel hit a roadblock or is not designed for the ground it is crossing. These create all kinds of problems and frictions.

Over time, Access Check-Ins morph and change to meet different needs, and we learn from the friction to make them better. There are a few major issues we have addressed over the years to keep the wheel turning. We have reinvented them many times to meet the needs of the people present. As you practice Access Check-Ins, stay aware of roadblocks and experiment with changing the way you do things.

The Stakes Are High

While we compare Access Check-Ins to games and songs, it is important to balance this sense of play with the reality that not respecting someone’s access needs can be hurtful, and even life-threatening. If someone says they need to take medicine, the Access Check-In may not be a game or joke to them. If someone shares an access need, it can be damaging and hurtful if the facilitator ignores it or allows others to ignore it. If someone cannot get information in an emergency preparedness meeting because their access needs aren’t met, there can be serious consequences. The stakes can be very high.

It's important to remember sharing needs during an Access Check-In are invitations and requests of the group, but not necessarily demands. In some cases, it is necessary to demand Access Needs be met. However, sometimes folks forget the impact of demands when they make them of others who have limited power to make change. This is why love is a necessary ingredient to making space together and building solidarity. It is okay to share anger during an Access Check-In, sometimes it is necessary to make space for ourselves.

When a facilitator and group use the information of an Access Check-In to change the way they do things, we accept shared responsibility for the overall wellness of the group. Our differences become sources of power and learning. Hold this responsibility with care, resist the urge to police each other’s mistakes, and keep trying in the face of failure.

Kill-Joys Are The Worst

Like all forms of access, an Access Check-In can be done in ways that do not serve the most marginalized in a space. Just because an Access Check-In happens does not mean it is bringing more life and possibility into a given space. One of the main reasons we resist standardization is because of how quickly it recreates the oppressive features of dominant culture. It kills joy.

Disabled and marginalized facilitators often forget to center our own Access Needs. It can be easy to want inclusion, but end up standardizing a space where we put the access of others before ourselves. For non-Disabled people, it can be easy to run on auto-pilot and to rush towards burnout without ever having really stopped to really consider Access Needs. It can also be easy to facilitate and feel icky toward other people for having their needs respected when we have not asked for our own needs to be met. When joy is absent, oppressive culture seeps in.

It is very common for an excited boss or teacher to try doing an Access Check-In, but leave the room feeling stale. And then keep doing it the same way, over and over again. Try to model asking for more than basic needs, but also ask to meet your needs for beauty, comfort, and pleasure that match your tastes in the moment. And invite the same of those around you. Resist the temptation for this to become routine, and allow the possibility for access to be an opportunity for continual reinvention. If you are used to being in charge, practice some humility, and give the group you work with the opportunity to ask for things which challenge your authority.  And remember to breathe, especially if you are new at this work.

This Is Not An Intrusive Identification Demand

Access Check-Ins do not replace the ongoing need to negotiate access and build relationships. Do not assume all access needs have been named during the check-in. As the organizers from the Disability Intersectionality Summit put it:

“It is important to note that many people will not share their access needs [during an Access Check-In] and that is okay. This is especially true if people do not have anyone in the room with whom they have access intimacy. We don’t want to replicate a culture of ableism and forced intimacy that disabled people have to endure every day. Never force anyone to share their access needs.”

People who are unfamiliar with Disability culture might think an Access Check-In is an opportunity to make an “Intrusive Identification Demand.” Claudia Alick of Calling Up Justice describes these as demands as “received by Disabled, BIPOC, and those with accents, dress, or indicators they are a different nationality. It is a microaggression that can include ableism, xenophobia, and racism.”  An invitation to share needs is not an opportunity to demand someone share a diagnosis or where they are from, or some other intrusive questions people in power use to make us feel othered. Do not demand someone share their access needs, even if you have built up trust together.

Access Friction As Creative Opportunity

When people come together, friction happens. Friction between different people’s Access Needs can be useful opportunities for creativity. Sometimes these are called “competing” or “conflicting” Access Needs. These metaphors do feel true in some situations. However, framing access friction as always being a “conflict” or “competition” predicts a situation of winners and losers rather than a collaborative process of co-creation. Friction is natural when bodies move together.

The idea of Access Friction originates from the design world. We learned about it through the work of Aimi Hamraie. We use it as a way to talk about the frictions that happen between people, especially between Disabled experiences. For example, if one person needs dim lighting due to light sensitivity, while another needs bright lights to read lips. One solution could be for the person who wants dim lighting to wear their favorite stylish sunglasses they would otherwise feel awkward asking to wear in a meeting without an Access Check-In. Another could be cool stylized lighting with cell phones to highlight people’s mouths when they talk while the rest of the room stays dim. Or another example: one person needs to eat while another is sensitive to the sound of chewing, so maybe the meeting can pause or be postponed for fifteen minutes so one person can eat rather than forcing the other to listen.

When we learn about each other’s sensitivities and pleasures over time, we build trust and Access Intimacy. This allows us to work with frictions as sources of information and creative solutions, rather than traps which pull us into an endless fight. While the oppressive culture we live in makes resources scarce and tempts us to battle each other forever, we resist this by sharing access rather than competing for it.

If you are helping a group work towards a shared goal, but some folks can’t because their needs aren’t met, it is such a joy to change the way things are going to make it possible for more people to participate.

Changing Historical Patterns

Personal and cultural history matter. Tune in with people who are usually expected to make others comfortable, or have their access needs put last. This is especially important for people who are oppressed because of racial, class, and gendered oppression, as well as people whose Disabilities are especially ignored in supremacy culture like neurodivergence, chemical sensitivities, chronic illness, or intellectual and developmental disabilities.

It can be exhausting to always have to squeeze around the unspoken needs of others, and very emotional suddenly have someone offer to support you. It can also be necessary to ask for acknowledgement of past harms.

One amazing feature of this practice is how we learn about each other and can become more friendly with one another’s ways of living. It is especially powerful when this space allows Disabled and marginalized people to be uninterrupted by non-Disabled people. We share tips for changing space together, and this opens the possibility of building camaraderie and coalition.

Question how marginalized people dream for our needs to be met, and build from our imagination. The Access Check-In is a work of wonder when it makes more space for marginalized folks and frees us from the usual way of doing things.

Model Leadership Through Access Check-Ins

Sometimes, we can interrupt the agenda to initiate an Access Check-In when our needs or the needs of those around us are being ignored. We can even do this if we aren’t the facilitator. Maybe this is a small side-conversation with a host or a big interruption to a large group meeting.

When you start an Access Check-In for yourself or others in the middle of the event, you have the power to greatly transform space for the better (even just for yourself). Invitations to change how we do things to meet each other’s needs are gifts, and should be received as such. Sometimes it can be enough to let a group know that our needs aren’t being met, and asking the group to hold that truth without changing anything before moving forward.  We can model our own access needs as belonging alongside those around us, and show how others can do it too.

Set The Stage For The World We Want To Be In

Access Check-Ins are a way to rehearse enjoying space with others. When used repeatedly over time with the same groups of people, you can build Access Intimacy with others. If you think of gatherings as theater performances, Access Check-Ins become ways to modify theatrical elements of being together, like lighting, sound, seating, speaking pace, distance between people, scripts, and so forth.

In addition to Access Check-Ins, you may invite folks to share access needs one-on-one, through email or sign-up forms, after an event, or even when a person’s needs weren’t met in order to change things in the future.  Alternate ways to negotiate access which aren’t Access Check-Ins include:

  • questionnaires;

  • post-meeting, non-mandatory questionnaires; and

  • formal or informal conversations where access needs are named, negotiated, and planned.

It can be impractical to have a large room full of 200 individual Access Check-Ins, so plan creative ways to invite this information. Perhaps suggest that people who begin speaking to a large group are welcome but not required to give an Access Check-In. Or invite people to share in small groups so others in the space can know their needs.

When we use Access Check-Ins as a repeated practice to invite our needs and imaginations to co-create spaces, we collectively move toward futures we want to share together.