The Visionary
Seeing a world that does not yet exist.
A quick note on where this comes from. The Visionary is a widely used figure across narrative and social-change psychology, standing for imagining arrangements genuinely different from present norms. This page centres specifically on the role this imagining plays in disability justice, universal design, and independent living movements.
Imagining what hasn’t been built yet
Universal design, independent living, disability justice, all of it required someone, at some point, to imagine an arrangement that simply didn’t exist yet, against the weight of an entire world built around a different, narrower default. That imaginative work remains ongoing and genuinely necessary.
Do you recognise any of this?
Illustrative composites, not quotations.
- “I can see a world that doesn’t exist yet, and I think it’s worth building.”
- “What future am I imagining, and what small part of it can be built now?”
- “Hope and social imagination feel like genuine, active skills to me, not just wishful thinking.”
- “Universal design, independent living, disability justice, they all required somebody to imagine it first.”
- “I want this vision to translate into something concrete eventually, not stay purely abstract.”
- “Living entirely in future possibility isn’t quite what I’m after, either.”
A scene
At a community planning meeting, Zara describes a vision for a fully accessible neighbourhood centre, and when someone objects that it’s unrealistic given the budget, she proposes a single, small, immediately achievable piece of it to start with this year.
What might happen
That’s a beautiful vision, but we simply don’t have that budget right now.
Understood. What if we started with just the entrance ramp and signage this year, as a concrete first step toward it?
So what is the Visionary?
The Visionary is the capacity to imagine arrangements genuinely different from present norms, a necessary and often undervalued first step in disability justice and universal design, which becomes most powerful when paired with concrete, immediately buildable steps.
A little theory
Where this sits. The Visionary is a widely used figure across narrative and social-change psychology, recognised for the essential role of imagination in any movement toward a different future. Disability justice and independent-living movements have historically relied on exactly this kind of imaginative work.
What the theory doesn’t say. It doesn’t say vision alone is sufficient, or that imagining a future substitutes for building any part of it. Living entirely in future possibility, without any concrete, present-tense action, is the trap this pattern warns against.
Where disability complicates the model
Universal design, independent living and disability justice all require imagining arrangements different from present norms, imaginative work that remains ongoing and essential, since the current default was never built with disabled people fully in mind.
Three ways of looking at it
The Gift
Genuine hope and real social imagination, the necessary first step toward any meaningful, structural change.
The Trap
Living entirely in future possibility, with the imagined world never translated into any achievable, present-tense action.
The Reality Check
What future am I imagining, and what small part of it can be built now? Pairing the two is where real, lasting change actually happens.
Body · Relationship · System
Body. A disabled body’s actual, current needs are the starting data for imagining a genuinely better future, not an obstacle to imagining it.
Relationship. Collaborators who can hold both the full vision and the achievable next step, as Zara does, keep a movement both inspired and effective.
System. Universal design and independent living, now accepted practice in many places, began as genuinely radical visions that took decades of sustained, incremental advocacy to build.
Ten minutes with it
- Recognise. Bring to mind a vision you hold for a more accessible or just future, large or small.
- Locate. Mine, yours, ours, or system? What scale of change is this vision actually asking for?
- Differentiate. What’s the full vision, and what’s one small, immediately achievable piece of it?
- Amplify: stay with the image. What would the first concrete step toward this vision actually look like?
- Challenge. Has this vision stayed purely abstract longer than necessary?
- Choose. Propose or begin the one achievable piece this month.
If you want to bring this into therapy
- “I have a vision for change that I want to translate into something concrete and achievable.”
- “I want help pairing my big-picture thinking with practical, immediate steps.”
- “I feel discouraged that my vision hasn’t gone anywhere yet, and I want to figure out a next step.”
In the therapy room
Help the client break a large, meaningful vision into one small, achievable next step, honouring both the scale of the vision and the practical need for forward movement.
Integration, and what it needn’t mean
Integrating this pattern means holding a genuine, ambitious vision while also identifying and taking the small, concrete steps that move toward it.
It doesn’t mean abandoning big, long-term visions for smaller, safer ones. It doesn’t mean every vision needs an immediate action plan. And it doesn’t mean progress has to be fast to be real.
Evidence and status
- The Visionary as a recurring figure is widely used across narrative and social-change psychology.
- The specific application to disability justice and universal design is this Hub’s own synthesis, drawing on disability rights history.
What if none of this fits?
That’s fine. Perhaps imagining broad, structural change isn’t something you’re drawn to right now, and that’s a reasonable place to be.
One question to carry: What future am I imagining, and what small part of it can be built now?