“Wait, really, stop, stop!”: Go-along interviews with visually disabled people and the pitfalls of ableist methodologies

PORKERTOVÁ, H., OSMAN, R., POSPÍŠILOVÁ, L., DOBOŠ, P., KOPECKÁ, Z. (2024): “Wait, really, stop, stop!”: Go-along interviews with visually disabled people and the pitfalls of ableist methodologies. Qualitative Research. [online first]

Despite the growing interest in walking methods in disability research, their methodological difficulties are rarely examined. Therefore, we debate the challenges of doing go-along interviews with visually disabled people when geographically studying blind experience with urban space. The article is divided into two parts. The methodological part examines the difficulties we encountered to contribute to the critical discussion of the ableist nature of both methodologies and post qualitative inquiry, and their interconnection with ableist conceptions of walking, talking, and space. Second, we discuss the epistemological consequences of go-along interviews, which have the potential to challenge existing thinking, ableist conceptions of space, and, consequently, the given discipline. The result is a constructivist conception of science that modifies human geography through visual disability and visual disability through human geography.