A brief summary of a recent project on physical disability, and how designers will tend to throw money at the problem where a more considered approach is probably called for.
One of the starting points for the project was a post I saw on bendybutnotbroken where an 18 year old girl said this, about disability effecting her going to class:
“Going to lectures is difficult. The chairs in the lecture theatres are really uncomfortable and theres not much leg room, but if I go in my wheelchair then Im just shoved in a corner at the front. I cant really see the powerpoint on the board and my note taker & friends have to sit away from me while Im on my own.”
Now, as designers, the first thing that people say is, “they should move the class, or re-design the space so that wheelchairs can fit in all of the seats, or there are no obstructions to view” and this is what was said about it initially in my studio. However, my thinking was that this is identifying the problem quite wrongly. The problem here isn’t that she can’t walk, which I think we can all agree sucks, but the simplest problem is that her friends don’t sit with her when she’s in the chair, because they get a shitty view.
So, I think the two design options have a very different costing of solutions, we can either try to de-design the room, or the chairs, at a high cost, so that she can sit wherever her friends are sitting OR we can spend more time, and less money, educating her friends on the frustrations of living with a physical disability.
Taking this second approach in mind, I tried to design furniture for able bodied users, that makes them think about some of the inconveniences of physical disability.
One of the chairs, with the seat missing, is made to evoke the same frustrations that disabled people feel when a disabled parking space, bathroom, ramp, or entrance has been blocked by a thoughtless third party. It’s a space designed for the user, that they cannot use.
The other chair (the one with two legs) was made so that an able bodied user sitting on it has to prop it up with one good leg, to make the chair work one has to sacrifice the use of that limb. You can’t rest it, or stretch it out, or cross your legs.
I don’t, by any means, think that these chairs are a super clear way of communicating what I was trying to, but I do feel I’m at an iterating starting point for more designs in the future. I hope I’ll be able to pick this project up again soon.
(emphasis mine)
This really rubs me the wrong way… This person is basically saying “instead of spending money on improving accessibility, we should just run disability ‘simulations’ to make disabled people’s friends feel sorry for them!”I was reading this and going “what the fuck” the whole time. This STILL makes it all about the able people.
It is not about them, and this doesn’t fucking “simulate” anything. Riding in a wheelchair doesn’t mean you know what it’s like to be physically disabled and these designs are the stupidest shit I’ve ever seen.
Also, I have scoliosis. It’s an impairment but not necessarily a disability (it’s not for me for example) and a fucked up chair doesn’t remotely simulate that impairment.
This discussion is really lively, and not too far removed from what most of my disabled friends have said about the work. I think my main thinking here was, as it so often has to be, the constraints of money. The institution that this girl studies at is never going to have enough money to re-model the building, so this changes the situation for a designer, and we have to ask ourselves what’s the best way to bring about the most amount of change with the available money.
If most of your disabled friends have a problem with it, cut it out. Seriously. We’re perfectly capable of using our little brains to determine what is and isn’t helpful for us.
If the school doesn’t have usable desks that allow her to be equally included in the classroom, the school is not accessible. You’ve just stated that the money it would cost to make sure every student has an equal education is not worthwhile, full stop.
In high school a friend of mine had a wasting decease, which over the course of our school careers took him from playing on the football team to no movement at all below the waist. We spent a lot of time fundraising, and managed to accrue tens of thousands of pounds to spend on a new wheelchair, when he was around 16 years old, that could use hydraulic rams to stand him up, to engage in conversations at head height with able-bodied people. This was great at first, and felt like all of our hard work had paid off with a big benefit to his standard of living. However, after a few months, design issues like the clunkiness of the expensive new chair, as well as the time it took (about 30 seconds) to raise and lower him to a standing height began to significantly outweigh the benefits of the chair, and he began to feel like the money we’d raised could have been better spent.
Did you ask a wheelchair user or anyone with a similar disability what sort of technology best help their lives? There’s no need to reinvent the wheel every time; a lot of disability rights activists have done a lot of work before us.
We discussed this during my project, and he came to the conclusion that he wasn’t really too bothered about wether or not he could stand up. The worst thing about his day was exclusion. The problem wasn’t that he couldn’t talk face-to-face with his able-bodied friends, it was that he felt excluded, and that a simpler solution to his problems would be a change in attitude from the able-bodied people around him on a day-to-day basis.
Yes, this is ableism. Disability and impairment are not the same thing, and if you’re in the UK there’s really no excuse not to be familiar with the social model: look it up. Read about it from the perspective of disabled people.
But the change in attitude YOU are talking about is artificial. Your friend’s impairments don’t prevent her from participating in class, from seeing the board, or taking notes. What prevents her is that all of the able people involved in the building didn’t give enough of a fuck to find out what the experience would be like for someone in a wheelchair. THAT is disability.
Creating a big emotional experience (at best) for everyone to pat themselves on the back about how transformed they are doesn’t help anyone know what it’s like to be disabled because you are perpetuating that disability. It’s selfish, and to be terribly honest you are being selfish. Did you ever think disabled people didn’t need you to come up with a solution for our problems, especially when you’re not really qualified to having never experienced them? Instead of expending all this effort on validating your and able peoples’ experiences you could have farmed around asking people who actually experience this barrier issues to help you?
This project has, by no means, reached a conclusion with which I am happy. But I do think there is validity to the idea that sometimes money can be better spent on educating those around a disabled user, rather than expensive physical manipulation of the user, or environment.
Again, you’re not addressing structural inequalities. There’s also no guarantee this would create even a shallow positive outcome, they may just feel angry or resentful at having to go through this charade “because” of your friend. I really don’t know what’s worse, an entire room full of people resenting me for the experience, or suddenly deciding they know what it’s like to be me and patting themselves on the back about how enlightened they are now.
My mate didn’t care about how he had to speak to people, he cared about what was said to him.
However, all of this feedback is being taken on board, and I thank you for it. If you disagree then please continue to tell me what’s wrong with the work, all criticism is useful. How would you go about changing attitudes toward disabled users? Or should I scrap the project entirely? Either way I appreciate your debate.
Yes, you should scrap the damn project. If you really remotely give a fuck about the actual experience of disabled people, talk to wheelchair users and find out what sort of things have worked for them.
If you want an actual way to try to educate on the nature of disability? Well, first of all you shouldn’t be doing it, you’re not qualified. But rather than artificially annoy the able students, you might actually obstruct their view, have them take turns with their desks at bad angles as well. The problem is not your friend’s physical impairments. These chairs do not address the problem. The problem is inclusion and the room’s design.
Then, once the students are aware of the actual issue, don’t just leave it off at a pity fest. Put your heads together and figure out a way to solve this problem. There may be something cheaper and easier than you’ve thought of. Identifying the problem is only the first step, if you don’t take steps to solve it you’re just an even more willing participant of ableism.
By the way here’s the feedback I got from the girl mentioned: “Hi. Glad it helped with your project. Its an awesome idea to get able-bodied people to think about what its like for disabled people especially using furniture. It shows that something simple can cause so much frustration. Although it would be nice for more thought to be put into designing the rooms in the first place. I dont even want to be able to access the whole room just one seat removed so a wheelchair could fit in would be handy. Love to see how it goes if you pick up the project again. x”
Yeah so basically what would actually help her is ONE accessible wheelchair space and from the sounds of it you’ve drastically overshot the cost of that project. The real question is whether your pride and enthusiasm for the designs you’ve done outweighs your actual willingness to give a fuck about the actual disabled people you’re purporting to help.
Wow. Again, thank you for such an involved response. I do not take your comments lightly, and any feedback from disabled users is highly valuable to me.
I have shown the project to numerous dialled people, with varying disabilities, and reviews have, as always, been mixed, though few have been as negative as yours, not that that’s a bad thing, far from it.
Your strong opinions on the matter really help to outline the worst parts about this work, and I will keep them to hand as ongoing critique throughout further projects looking at physical disability, I hope you won’t be surprised if I come to you in the future for your opinions on further work, thanks again for taking the time to write your feelings on the project in such detail.
Dessert: This antique waffle iron was in my Grandparents’ old house, it makes heart shaped waffles.
bits and bobs of a few paintings promoting the late great gavin black horse
