The Inventor
Finding a route when the conventional route does not work.
A quick note on where this comes from. The Inventor is a widely used figure across narrative and creativity psychology, standing for adaptation and ingenuity. This page holds that gift carefully alongside a genuine political point: disabled ingenuity is real, and so is the right not to have to invent around a problem that institutions should have fixed in the first place.
Working around what should have worked already
You’ve built a clever workaround, a modified tool, a different sequence of steps, a creative use of an everyday object, to handle something the world simply wasn’t built to accommodate. The ingenuity is genuinely yours and genuinely admirable. It’s also worth noticing that you shouldn’t have had to invent it in the first place.
Both things are true, and both deserve a place in the sentence, not just the flattering half that ends at “how resourceful.”
Do you recognise any of this?
Illustrative composites, not quotations, offered so you can notice what fits.
- “I found a route when the conventional route simply didn’t work for me.”
- “Is this adaptation empowering me, or compensating for somebody else’s failure to provide access?”
- “Disabled innovation is real, and I’m proud of mine. I also think about what shouldn’t have been necessary.”
- “Adaptation and ingenuity are genuine strengths of mine. I’d just rather not need them for things that could be built right from the start.”
- “I don’t want to be expected to solve every barrier that institutions should have removed.”
- “My workarounds are clever. The fact that I need them this often isn’t something to celebrate uncritically.”
- “Both halves of this are true, and I want both in the sentence, not just the flattering one.”
A scene
After a colleague praises the clever modified setup Idris built for his workstation, calling it “so inspiring,” Idris finds himself torn between genuine pride in the solution and quiet frustration that the standard equipment was never designed with him in mind to begin with.
What might happen
Honestly, your setup is so clever. You’re really inspiring.
Thanks. Honestly, I’d also love it if IT just ordered the right equipment the first time, so I didn’t have to build this myself.
The colleague, a little surprised, actually follows up by asking what the right equipment would have been, and offers to raise it with IT directly on Idris’s behalf.
This scene is small on purpose. One conversation doesn’t change IT’s procurement process overnight. It does turn a passing compliment into something with actual, practical follow-through, which is a different and more useful outcome than admiration alone.
So what is the Inventor?
The Inventor is the genuine capacity to find a creative route when the conventional route doesn’t work, a real and valuable skill that sits alongside the equally real right not to have to invent around barriers institutions should have removed in the first place.
A little theory
Where this sits. The Inventor is a widely used figure across narrative and creativity psychology, celebrating ingenuity and adaptive problem-solving. This page extends that general celebration with a specific, disability-relevant caveat: the celebration shouldn’t obscure the structural failure the ingenuity is compensating for.
Disability studies names the specific function this celebration can serve
Disability studies scholarship has specifically critiqued how praise for disabled ingenuity can function, whether intentionally or not, as a quiet form of institutional relief: by celebrating the individual workaround, an institution can avoid noticing, or being asked to fix, the structural gap the workaround exists to patch. This isn’t an argument against admiration itself; it’s a caution that admiration alone, without any follow-through toward the underlying fix, can become a comfortable substitute for actual structural change, which is exactly the dynamic Idris names and his colleague moves past by actually offering to follow up.
What the theory doesn’t say
It doesn’t say disabled ingenuity isn’t real or admirable; it genuinely is. It says that admiration for the ingenuity shouldn’t quietly become an excuse for institutions to avoid fixing the underlying accessibility problem.
Where disability complicates the model
Disabled innovation is real, and so is the right not to need it. Disabled innovation is real. So is the right not to have to invent around inaccessible systems. Both of these facts are true simultaneously, and conversations about disability ingenuity too often drop the second one entirely.
Naming the structural gap at the moment of praise is more effective than raising it separately later. As Idris’s response demonstrates, pairing acceptance of a compliment with an immediate, specific ask, better equipment ordered the right way the first time, is often more actionable for the listener than a general complaint raised at a different time, since it gives them a concrete, immediate thing they can actually do.
This pattern repeats across many different domains, not just workplace equipment. The same structure, genuine personal ingenuity compensating for a fixable structural gap, appears in countless other contexts, modified home routines, improvised transport solutions, adapted social scripts, each one worth the same two-part naming rather than only celebrating the cleverness.
Three ways of looking at it
The Gift
Real adaptation, genuine ingenuity, and practical creativity, a skill worth taking real pride in on its own terms. Naming the structural gap at the exact moment of praise, as Idris does, often produces more real follow-through than raising it separately.
The TrapThe person becomes expected to solve barriers that institutions should actually remove, with their individual cleverness used as a quiet excuse for systemic inaction, admiration standing in for actual fix.
The Reality CheckIs this adaptation empowering me, or compensating for somebody else’s failure to provide access? Both can be true at once, which is exactly the point worth naming.
Body · Relationship · System
Body. Your body’s genuine, creative solutions to its own needs deserve recognition as skill, not pity, and not an excuse for others to look away from the gap that made the skill necessary.
Relationship. People who admire your ingenuity and then ask what would make it unnecessary, as Idris’s colleague does, turn admiration into genuine allyship.
System. Institutions that rely on individual disabled people’s workarounds, rather than fixing accessible design at the source, are outsourcing structural responsibility onto individuals.
Ten minutes with it
- Recognise. Bring to mind a clever adaptation or workaround you’ve built to handle an inaccessible system.
- Locate. Mine, yours, ours, or system? Who should actually be responsible for fixing the underlying gap?
- Differentiate. What genuinely is your own creative achievement, and what’s compensating for a structural failure?
- Amplify: stay with the image. What would it feel like if this workaround simply weren’t necessary anymore? This is the Gift.
- Challenge. Has praise for your ingenuity ever substituted for an institution actually fixing the problem? This is the Reality Check.
- Choose. Name the underlying gap explicitly to whoever’s responsible, alongside or instead of simply accepting praise for the workaround.
If you only have two minutes, try these instead:
- What specific, concrete fix would make this workaround unnecessary?
- Could I name that fix right now, in this same conversation?
- Is this compliment quietly standing in for an actual fix?
- Who’s actually responsible for closing this gap?
You don’t have to do anything next. If something does want action, it might be:
- naming a specific fix at the exact moment of praise, as Idris does;
- accepting the compliment on its own terms, just this once, with no follow-up;
- identifying who’s actually responsible for a structural gap you’ve been patching;
- taking it to therapy or supervision;
- or deciding this pattern simply doesn’t fit you.
Self-exploration doesn’t have to become self-improvement.
If you want to bring this into therapy
- “I’m tired of being praised for workarounds that shouldn’t have been necessary in the first place.”
- “I want to take pride in my own ingenuity while still naming the structural gap behind it.”
- “I want help advocating for a real fix instead of just accepting my own workaround indefinitely.”
- “I want practice naming a specific fix in the moment someone compliments my adaptation.”
These are examples, not scripts to memorise. Change the words until they sound like you.
In the therapy room
This section is for therapists, and for anyone curious about what a good response might look like. Validate the client’s genuine ingenuity while also making space for legitimate frustration at needing it, rather than framing every adaptation purely as a triumph.
Practise naming the fix in the moment, not just after the fact. Help the client rehearse pairing acceptance of praise with a specific, concrete ask, which tends to produce more real change than a general complaint raised separately.
Name the institutional-relief function of uncritical praise explicitly. Introducing the disability-studies critique of ingenuity narratives can help a client understand their own frustration with being called “inspiring” as a recognised, structural pattern, not an ungrateful reaction.
Integration, and what it needn’t mean
Integrating this pattern means genuine pride in your own creative problem-solving coexists with a clear-eyed naming of the structural gap that made it necessary.
It doesn’t mean rejecting pride in your own adaptations. It doesn’t mean every workaround needs to come with a structural complaint attached. And it doesn’t mean the two feelings, pride and frustration, can’t coexist.
Evidence and status
- The Inventor as a recurring figure is widely used across narrative and creativity psychology.
- The critique of ingenuity narratives as institutional relief is a documented position within disability studies scholarship.
- The specific disability political point here is this Hub’s own synthesis of that scholarship.
What if none of this fits?
That’s fine. Perhaps your own environment has always been genuinely accessible, without needing a personal workaround.
One question to carry: Is this adaptation empowering me, or compensating for somebody else’s failure to provide access?