One of the many things I appreciated about this week’s reading is how expansive and detailed its exploration of the relationship between design and disability is. Indeed, for a long time, designing for disability, as a discipline or practice, was brushed aside and accessibility was achieved merely by asking what augmentations need to be introduced to allow certain groups of people with disabilities the ability to use a platform or a product. The chapter begins by examining products built for those with disabilities and the role of fashion and artistic designers in normalizing and destigmatizing these products, effectively engulfing designs for those with disabilities into the wider culture of “mainstream” fashion. This latter inclusion affords people with disabilities both the luxury of choice and the long-awaited pleasure of finally being seen, both of which are things most people take for granted. We can see this sentiment reflected in the desire of athlete and model Aimee Mullins to find prosthetics that are “off-the-chart glamorous.” Incorporating artists in conversations about design for disability, which have been largely dominated by those with clinical and engineering backgrounds, is imperative in finding the sweet spot between functionality and aesthetics. I believe it is, however, important that those who are designing for disability are keen on involving the target user in their design process – the same way they would be if they were designing for any other target audience.
Interweaved within this aforementioned discussion is an emphasis on language. Integrating such designs into fashion means integrating them into a larger system of cultural artefacts, one of which is language. I enjoyed the delineation of the linguistic evolution of “spectacles” to “eyewear”. “Patients” become “wearers”. The term “HearWear” is proposed in place of “hearing aids.” These are illustrations of how designers can actively contribute to changing cultural and societal outlooks, which is an essential prerequisite for actualizing inclusion.
One belief I held prior to reading this chapter was that designs had to be universally inclusive. After all, what is so difficult about ensuring that we have a multimodal interface that can accommodate all users? What I failed to realize is that additive complexity, as was pointed out by the article, would potentially create unintended inaccessibility. The idea of designing appliances and platforms that are effectively “flying submarines” is bound to leave us with an influx of products that are overly intricate, but with subpar performance in any singular task. It seems like what we need is a diversity of robust designs and products, for each type of user, that can perform their intended tasks optimally with elegant simplicity. We can only begin to reframe how we think of designing for disability – designing for inclusion – by inviting more than just engineers, whose aim is merely to achieve functionality and problem-solving, into the conversation.