Design Meets Disability
This reading, about how designing for disabilities can change the way we think of design, was extremely well structured and raised many thoughts. Firstly, it was interesting to observe how the evolution of glasses from being perceived as a medical device to a fashion accessory mirrored my personal journey with glasses. I have needed to wear glasses since third grade, and in the first few years I greatly resented them and preferred how I looked without them. My eyes progressively got worse every year, and so I always had to update my glasses. In high school, something shifted and I did not mind much how I looked with glasses anymore, and I began to look forward to the opportunity to get new glasses. As the reading stated, it is having the choice between different options that empowers the consumer to “accessorize” their image. The fact that the accessory is needed to enable human function does not take away from its worth as a fashion statement. Last year I got a new pair of golden framed glasses, and that was the first time I felt happy to be wearing them, as one of my favorite book characters also wears golden framed glasses.
The reading brought up the question of if it is possible to “appropriate” things like eyewear, or in the future, hearing aids and prostheses. Personally, I find it just a tad bit annoying when people wear non-prescription glasses just for the looks, because they have the privilege of not actually needing them to see. In the future, if development in the design of hearing aids follows the trajectory of that of glasses, will people start sporting “hearwear” even if they do not have hearing loss? And how would this be received by Deaf communities? While there is no “community” of people with glasses, there are deaf communities with their own cultures, and so the two situations are not really comparable. And then, what about prostheses?
I also felt that the principle presented in the reading of achieving positive image without invisibility was especially powerful, as it reminded me of discourses within queer history about how the goal should not be to assimilate (into heteronormative culture) in order to gain acceptance, but to have the freedom of visibility without receiving harm for it.