Rethinking Disability & Design

“Ghost Wheel Chair” - K. Wasserman, 2011. 

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about design’s ability to restructure how we see disability. The view most accepted by disability theorists and activists defines disability as a purely social category.  The common medical understanding of disability, in contrast, can only create a very negative and restrictive view—one which supports that a disabled individual has a bodily defect that must be cured or eliminated in order for them to achieve full capacity and personhood.

It is important to remember that homosexuality and being female or black were considered disabilities up to the late 60s in the US. These groups have thankfully had their revolutions, however, those still stuck in the category by force or choice have become compounded and further enveloped by stigma as others have escaped it.  A source of this stigma is associated with how the disabled individual appears - whether they have a unique body, behavior, or assistive technology. 

In essence, I believe the medicalized look of these technologies or prosthetics is limiting social understanding and the disabled individual’s ability to feel and know their self worth. As a project, I  altered the presently trendy “Ghost Chair” into a wheelchair.  Although this model is not the most practical looking, I think it makes a statement and proclaims a hope that disability can possibly not exist if designers can critically create assistive devices that are not only cool, but functional. Eye glasses were once heavily discriminated against due to their previous medical look. Now they have become something we not only use to assist, but also, to express our selves.

(Read Graham Pullin’s “Disability Meets Design” if you’re interested in this topic.)