Not just the ramp: routinings and the messy politics of access in blue space fieldwork

Debates around access in disability research often assume it is either available or denied -- secured by ramps, protocols, or permissions. This contribution challenges that binary by tracing how access is enacted, strained, and withdrawn through the ordinary labour of fieldwork. Drawing from research in coastal environments with visually impaired participants, I introduce the concept of routinings: shared, sensory practices like dressing, immersing, refusing, and navigating that shape how participation unfolds. These moments are emotionally charged, environmentally shaped, and often invisible to institutional logics. Routinings demand attention because they reveal access to be unstable, co-produced, and deeply relational. By foregrounding materiality, vulnerability, and the more-than-human, this piece joins growing calls for messy, embodied fieldwork -- and centres disabled people in that conversation. It raises a critical question: who is fieldwork designed for, and whose participation gets quietly routinised out?