Experiential stability and mobility justice: A qualitative study of accessibility and uncertainty in the Seoul Metropolitan Area

Background Many high-income metropolitan regions appear to provide extensive accessible transport infrastructure for people with disabilities. However, proximity-based and infrastructure compliance indicators may overestimate accessibility by overlooking how systems perform. This gap is particularly important in dense transit-oriented cities where formal provision coexists with lived uncertainty. This study examines how accessibility is experienced beyond visible built environment investments. Methods Twenty-two semi-structured interviews and three go-along observations were conducted with adults with visual, mobility, and hearing impairments in the Seoul Metropolitan Area between 2022 and 2023. Participants were predominantly adults with visual impairments (n = 17 of 22), with smaller numbers of participants with mobility and hearing impairments; findings should therefore be read primarily as reflecting visual impairment experience rather than the full range of disability groups. Iterative thematic analysis was used to examine how uncertainty emerged across stages of the travel chain and how individuals adapted to transport delivery conditions. Results Despite extensive infrastructure provision, participants consistently characterized accessibility as conditionally reliable rather than structurally dependable. Elevator breakdowns, inconsistent accessibility information, environmental obstructions, variable assistance practices, and unpredictable paratransit waiting times generated cumulative instability. Participants engaged in temporal buffering, vigilance, and selective avoidance to manage institutionalized uncertainty. These adaptations mitigated immediate risks but constrained spontaneity, increased cognitive load, and limited participation. Conclusions Visible accessibility infrastructure does not guarantee experiential accessibility. This study proposes experiential stability as a sensitizing framework for conceptualizing accessibility as sustained reliability across time and interaction, rather than as a generalizable theory of disability and transport. By framing transport instability as experiential exposure, this study contributes to transport-health research by highlighting performance variability and psychosocial burden as dimensions of lived mobility. Stability-oriented indicators may complement existing compliance metrics in policy evaluation, particularly in dense, transit-oriented urban settings where infrastructure provision is high but service reliability remains uneven.