Paper Short Abstract:

This study critically examines go-along interviews with visually disabled individuals, highlighting the ableist assumptions embedded in walking methods. Combining sit-down and go-along interviews, it reveals methodological and ethical challenges, advocating for inclusive, flexible approaches to explore non-visual spatial experiences.

Paper Abstract:

Although the interest in walking methods in disability research is growing, their methodological pitfalls are rarely addressed. While go-along interviews are celebrated for capturing micro-geographies and embodied experiences, their design assumes ableist norms of walking, talking, and spatial movement, presenting unique methodological and ethical challenges when working with visually disabled participants. Combining sit-down and go-along interviews with fourteen legally blind individuals, the conference contribution uncovers how these challenges reveal deeper tensions between research methodologies and lived experience.

The research exposes power asymmetries between sighted researchers and blind participants, necessitating careful planning, negotiation, and situated ethical improvisation to ensure participants’ autonomy and safety. Unexpected situations—such as disrupted navigation, researcher interventions, and misaligned anticipations—highlight the inadequacy of standardized methods for individuals who defy spatial norms. Recognizing this, the contribution reimagines go-alongs as a “laboratory” for co-creating knowledge, allowing researchers to critically confront ableist methodologies as well as anti-methodologies as presented by post-qualitative inquiry.

This study underscores the importance of mutual understanding, flexible methods, and situated ethics to explore non-visual dimensions of space while respecting participants’ experience and needs. By bridging disability geography and poststructuralist theory, it demonstrates how go-along interviews can challenge dominant visual-centric paradigms, offering a constructivist approach to urban space. The study findings provide practical guidance for conducting mobile methods with disabled individuals, encouraging researchers to critically engage with the ableism embedded in research practices. This approach not only advances inclusivity in geographic inquiry but also generates new epistemological insights into the co-creation of space and movement.