DECEMBER 3, 2025
Xiaoyuan Yi
It started on a snowy winter night in 2015, when I first met Prof. Lei Shao. Looking back now, I just realized that outside of my studies and work, I have spent ten years engaged in volunteer social service focused on Diversity and Inclusion (D&I). Over the decade, no matter how busy my coursework was or how much pressure I faced at work, I kept trying to make small contributions to D&I and disability communities, driven by a simple belief: D&I is not just a label or a slogan, but a force that can change the society and move humanity forward. On this ten-year mark, I am writing this short reflection to look back on that journey and, hopefully, to pass this belief on.
At THU campus. 2012.
As the first severely disabled student on record to be admitted to Tsinghua University through the national college entrance examination (Gaokao), I left a small, remote town in southern China for Beijing in 2012. By then, I had already spent thirteen years in a wheelchair, yet my world was still quite narrow. I knew very little about D&I, accessibility, or human rights. Even so, during my university life from 2012 to 2015, I already felt the invisible influence of social labels.
Everyone is, often unconsciously, tagged in some way by society and others, especially minorities such as people with disabilities. These labels come with stereotypes that spill over into every aspect of how a person is judged. From a machine learning perspective, each of us is constantly fitting an internal distribution p(x|a), where a is a social label, e.g., disability, and represents perceived competence. With “Maximum Likelihood Estimation” on limited and biased data, that distribution is almost skewed, which is, in some sense, natural and understandable, but also quietly unjust. It was in those years that the idea of D&I first began to take root in me, along with a desire to do something, however small, to push back against this bias.
In December 2015, on a snowy winter night, I had just received, as the only student with a severe disability ever at that time, the Tsinghua University Premier Scholarship (the highest honor at this top university, awarded to only ten students each year). After that, Prof. Shao from the School of Architecture reached out to me for a long, thoughtful conversation. At that night, it was the first time I learned that there are around one billion persons with disabilities in the world, including about 85 million in China; It was the first time I really learned the concept of accessibility, and the first time I began to see how inclusive design and policies might help build a freer, more open, and more inclusive world, “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights” (from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights). After that conversation, I decided that I wanted to devote my own efforts, though limited, to that vision.
Opening ceremony of Institute for Accessibility Development. Left: my friend, Prof. Zhu from Liaoning Technical University; Center: myself; Right: Vice President of CFPD. 2016.
In 2016, at Prof. Shao’s invitation, I participated in the preparatory work for establishing Tsinghua Institute for Accessibility Development, and later took part in many activities organized by the China Disabled Persons’ Federation (CDPF). Then, as a co-founder, I established the Tsinghua Student Accessibility Research Association (THU-SARA), one of the earliest student organizations in China dedicated to accessibility, together with others.
I served as vice president in 2017 and president in 2018, and even after my term as president ended, I have continued to be actively involved in the association’s work.
The association’s mission was to bring together students from different disciplines and use their expertise to support the development of accessibility, from design and research to suggestions and advocacy, through the perspective of students. We believed that most bias and stereotypes toward minorities stem from simple lack of awareness. It is not that people refuse to understand, but that they have never really had the chance to know; not that they do not care, but that they simply do not know.
THU-SARA presenting at the 15th China Information Accessibility Forum. 2020.
Starting from “concept accessibility”, we organized a wide range of activities on campus to raise the awareness of inclusion and accessibility. We collaborated with external non-profit organizations, drafted reports on accessibility limitations at THU, released the “General Accessibility Development Initiative,” organized forums for students with disabilities and supported their daily life, and brought accessibility advocacy from the university into middle schools and primary schools in Beijing, where we launched the “China Youth General Accessibility Development Initiative.” Over these six years, more than 200 students joined the association. Together, we organized dozens of activities, reached thousands of participants, and significantly helped to push forward accessibility development at the university.
In 2018, when my term as president came to an end, I described our work in my final report as “small yet great things”. Each contribution was like a single raindrop, which is seemingly insignificant on its own, yet capable of flowing together into rivers and seas, as we always believe that every individual matters, and every tiny effort makes a difference.
Group photo of all former presidents of SARA. 2020.
Thanks to these efforts and to the broader push for change, many universities in China today are able to admit students with severe disabilities, such as visual, hearing, or mobility impairments, and provide them with the necessary accommodations and support so that they can study and live freely and with dignity. More and more students are also becoming involved in learning about and practicing the principles of inclusion and accessibility.
“Selflessness is one of the greatest virtues of this whole creation.” Along this journey, every member’s effort was not for personal gain, but for a shared vision: a freer, more open, and more inclusive world. In my 2018 report, I wrote, “What we have done so far is still very little, but we will do more in the future.” I am proud that I have been able to stay true to my promise and carry this spirit of selfless commitment forward to now.
In 2021, after receiving my PhD from THU, I joined Microsoft as a researcher at Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA). D&I is one of Microsoft’s core values and top priorities, and different organizations across the company run their own D&I initiatives. At Prof. Tieyan Liu’s invitation, I joined the MSRA D&I committee in my second month at the company, expanding my earlier focus on accessibility into the broader D&I space. Since then, I have been helping D&I activities across the Microsoft Asia-Pacific Research and Development Group (APRD).