Beyond a buzzword: the need for shared language, education, and enhanced reporting of disability inclusive co-design research

BACKGROUND: Co-design is an increasingly prominent method for achieving disability-inclusive research. Co-design draws attention to the value of involving people with lived experience of disability in shaping research questions, methods, and outcomes, making it an ideal vehicle for inclusion. Yet, the rise in popularity of co-design in disability research has created challenges. Inconsistent definitions, misaligned practices, and inadequate reporting have undermined both the rigour of the method and its potential to generate meaningful and impactful outcomes. DISCUSSION: In this commentary, we argue that safeguarding the future of disability inclusive co-design requires a systemic shift towards accountability and transparency. We propose four urgent recommendations to enhance and maintain the integrity and impact of co-design: 1. Establish a shared language that distinguishes levels of participation, clarifies epistemic assumptions, and articulates underlying values. This is critical to ensure that co-design claims accurately reflect the nature of involvement. 2. Build capacity and capability for researchers and people with lived experience of disability. This includes in facilitation skills, ethical engagement, inclusive communication, and navigating power dynamics, to avoid tokenism and collaborate more effectively. 3. Develop a co-design-specific reporting framework to make relational, procedural, and decision-making processes more transparent. 4. Mandate better reporting of co-design practices by funders, journal editors, and institutions to ensure accountability and reportable rigour of co-design research with people with disability. CONCLUSION: Ultimately, co-design can either be a powerful tool for inclusive research or a hollow promise that perpetuates the exclusion it seeks to remedy. Adopting these recommendations for language, capacity, and standard, mandated reporting are essential steps for safeguarding the integrity of the method. It will also support more accountable, authentic, and impactful research that truly reflects the voices, priorities, and lived experiences of collaborators with disability.