Welcome to the ENABLE Model
The ENABLE Model is a field guide for making accessibility happen -- and for understanding what happens when it doesn't.
When systems withdraw care, disabled people are left to carry the cost.
Not all exclusion is deliberate, but all of it disables someone.
ENABLE maps the gap between the care that builders should deliver -- and the labor that disabled people are forced to carry when that care is missing.
It shows:
- What to do before something ships → Pre-launch Interventions
- What happens when care is missing → Post-launch Compensations
- What forces disable people → Forces That Disable
- What forces sustain access → Forces That Enable
- Who’s doing the work in the world → Manifestations
🔎 Explore the Model
🛠 Pre-launch Interventions
Acts of care that prevent inaccessibility before something ships -- requirement setting, design, development, QA, triage, and more.
🧷 Post-launch Compensations
What disabled people are forced to do when care is absent: rely on assistive tech, invent workarounds, ask for help, file complaints, or walk away.
🧨 Forces That Disable
Bias. Silence. Turnover. Ambiguity. Instability. Abandonment.
These aren't accidents. They’re structural, cultural, and organizational forces that disable people by withdrawing access.
🛡️ Forces That Enable
Storytelling. Protest. Policy. Community. Institutional memory.
These are the counterweights that push back against abandonment and exclusion.
🌐 Manifestations
Real-world examples of organizations, tools, and campaigns that resist neglect and sustain access in practice.
🎯 Who is this for?
- Builders designing, coding, and shipping
- Activists holding institutions accountable
- Funders and policymakers shaping priorities
- Educators teaching the next generation
- Teammates who don’t want anyone left behind
💡 Why ENABLE?
Accessibility needs more than checklists.
It needs language for care, clarity about burden, and a framework for when and where action must take place.
ENABLE =
Early Neglect Allows Barriers Limiting Equity
-- and --
End-users Navigate Asymmetric Barriers, Laboring Excessively
It maps the two halves of accessibility:
- Pre-launch interventions -- when care is embedded upstream
- Post-launch compensations -- when care is missing, and the burden shifts downstream
Access isn’t fragile -- until systems make it that way. ENABLE helps you change that.
Where it comes from
The ENABLE model is a novel, narrative-based media intervention developed from the Digital Inclusion Manifesto, Lawrence Weru’s capstone for the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. It is a work of public ethnography -- grounded in anthropology, journalism, and disability studies -- that uses storytelling and social marketing to raise awareness, build empathy, and inspire action toward a more accessible web. This website documents how people intervene or compensate when accessibility breaks down, and how systems can be designed to deliver care instead.