The Original Lifehackers

This disconnect between the work that disability advocates and scholars are doing to build a culture, and the way that businesses profit off of reinforcing our stigmas, this is what I torture myself trying to reconcile through design every single day.

It didn't take me long to wonder why my eyeglasses were fashionable when my cane was not. This is how I discovered my passion for design.

Disability did not exist before industrialization. You would have a blind person, or someone with cerebral palsy, or someone using a cane living in their community. But they weren't grouped together. They weren't a thing called disability.

Industrialization created the medical model of disability which states we are disabled by our bodies.I ascribe to the social model which states we are disabled, not by our bodies, but by the world around us.

Design for disability is so focused on fixing us that it had the unfortunate effect of turning our needs into our identities. Design for disability assumes we must overcome otherwise we're going to succumb to this terrible thing called disability.

I believe that disability is actually looking for its cult brand, the one that is going to finally see us and wink at us.

So, how do you wink at disability? I'll first start with what not to do: Don't do anything for us, it's not gonna get anybody anywhere. Don't try and fix us. Don't resort to this inspiration porn cliche.

What I've realized is that disabled people are the original lifehackers. We would develop an intuitive creativity because we're forced to navigate a world that isn't built for our bodies.

Whatever you do, don't commit to disability—commit to disabled people.

How do you wink at disability? You use your resources to elevate our voices—that's a wink. You work with us to reject the norm—that's a wink. But also you allow us to critique your systems because what I have learned is that when we're finally able to critique the systems that disable us, everybody involved stops seeing our bodies as the problem.

Tech is dediversifying us to our supposed inclusion

Inclusive design doesn't mean inclusive, not in the way I had intended, meaning a variety of approaches. Inclusive has become a way to talk around disability because nobody wants to say the word disability.

When you design for disability, you do focus on accessibility, but designing with disability will incorporate accessibility into a much larger conversation.