Writing and Media
Selected essays and interviews on disability, ableism, accommodations, and institutional design.
Writing
Why Your Accommodation Process Is Costing You Top Talent
Article — LinkedIn
An analysis of how workplace accommodation processes can shift from collaborative problem-solving into employee-proposal review—and how that failure contributes to preventable conflict and talent loss.
The article examines responsibility for identifying accommodations, the expertise used in the process, assumptions about essential functions, and the need to continue searching when an initial proposal does not work.
Ableism Nearly Killed Me — Recognizing It Saved My Life
Essay —Medium (Human Parts)
A personal account of living and working with Just Right obsessive-compulsive disorder, navigating failed accommodations in higher education, and eventually recognizing those experiences as structural rather than personal failure.
The essay examines rigid definitions of productivity and professional success, the harm caused when ableism remains unnamed, and the importance of creating alternative ways for disabled people to contribute.
Dialogues on Disability: Shelley Tremain Interviews Karin Boxer
Written interview — Biopolitical Philosophy
A wide-ranging conversation about moral responsibility, structural ableism in academia, accommodation failure, disability identity, and the institutional norms that determine whose ways of working are treated as legitimate.
The interview also traces the development of my work on accommodation-process reform, disabled faculty retention, disability as diversity, and infrastructure parity in higher education.
Media
Adding Structure to the Interactive Process
Video interview · Disability Idea with Myles Wallace
A conversation about why the ADA interactive process often fails to function as collaborative problem-solving and what a more structured accommodation search would require.
We discuss the burden placed on employees to identify solutions, the limitations of relying primarily on medical expertise, the analysis of essential functions, and the need for continued iteration when an initial accommodation does not work.
My Disability Story: Karin Boxer
Video interview · Myles Wallace, Peak Performers
A lived-experience conversation about Just Right OCD, the loss of a 24-year academic career following accommodation failures, and the alternative ways of working that institutions did not explore.
The interview provides the personal foundation for my current work on accommodation-process reform and institutional design: what happens when an organization treats a disabled employee’s way of working as the problem rather than examining whether the job and its surrounding systems could operate differently.
Understanding Ableism
Podcast interview · Start Where You Are—Stop Thinking, Start Doing with Kim Lloyd
A discussion of ableism as a structural system, how assumptions about normalcy and competence become embedded in institutions, and why barriers produced by institutional design are so often interpreted as individual weakness or failure.