This week’s reading was very eye-opening, and addressed a number of design aspects that I had never really considered. The title Design Meets Disability left me with a preconception of what that entailed, which was quickly proven wrong. I’ve worn glasses since I was nine years old, so seeing one of the first sections focus on them came as a surprise to me. I am obviously aware of things like contacts and non-prescription lenses, but it was fascinating to look at the shift from medical spectacles to ‘eyeware’ and see how the perception completely changed. The hearing aid section served as a contrast to that change, where the emphasis is on hiding them from view. There have been a number of times where it took me years of knowing someone to ever notice that they wear hearing aids, which speaks to how far the technology has come. Another tidbit was the mention of using pink plastic to try and hide wearable devices like those, which stood out to me at the very beginning of the text and was addressed again here.
I found it harder to identify with the later portions on prosthetic limbs, mostly due to lack of exposure, but I also feel like it is harder to think about in general. Glasses and hearing aids just focus the ambient light/sound to fit your needs, but trying to design a fully-functional arm seems much more complex. The aesthetic side of things is also a bit strange. Instead of being worn on your head and framing your face, they are harder to work with in that they are simply much larger, but can also be obscured by clothing much more easily. The battle between functionality and aesthetic also becomes much more important, with some prosthetics aiming to look as realistic as possible versus using inorganic structures like hooks to maximize their usefulness. From there you can even ask whether we should allow prosthetics to be constrained by the rest of the body, or to instead push into the realm of transhumanism.