When Access Is Assigned Instead of Chosen
Sometimes access is offered without choice.
I've noticed how often decisions about access are made for Deaf people rather than with Deaf people.
Access is often treated as a technical solution.
In practice, it is a systemic decision.
Across public services, education, health, and workplaces, access is increasingly assigned, based on cost, availability, or institutional preference rather than chosen by Deaf people.
This is not neutrality.
It is a transfer of power.
The issue is not whether access is human or technological.
The issue is that systems decide what Deaf people should accept and present that decision as inclusion.
When choice is removed, access becomes conditional:
conditional on the budget
conditional on efficiency
conditional on what is easiest to provide
The impact is not abstract.
For some Deaf people, certain forms of access are unsafe.
For others, they are ineffective.
For others, they may be appropriate only in specific contexts.
Those distinctions disappear when access is standardised.
Systems often frame this as progress or innovation.
But when Deaf consent is missing, what is really happening is control.
True access is not about replacing one solution with another.
It is about recognising Deaf autonomy, including the right to decide what access feels safe, usable, and appropriate.
Access that is imposed is not access.
It is compliance.
Choice is not a preference.
It is a requirement.
