Words by Rome Jorge
“Did you know that email was originally invented to help the deaf?’ claims Elise Roy, disability rights lawyer and social design advocate who lost hear hearing at the age of 10. At a TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Talk in 2016, Roy also claimed, “Text messaging: that was originally designed for people who are deaf. And as you know, everybody loves that, too.”
Roy also highlighted a more verifiable example: the popular OXO Potato Peeler was originally designed by Sam Farber for his wife’s arthritic hands. “It was originally designed for people with arthritis, but it was so comfortable, everybody loved it,” she noted.
Regardless of the veracity of her claims regarding emails and text messages, Roy speaks the truth about design: “Designing for extremes creates solutions that are better than when we design for the norm. And people with disabilities are great examples of extreme users.”
“What if we started designing for disability first, not the norm? As you see, when we design for disability first, we often stumble upon solutions that are not only inclusive, but also are often better than when we design for the norm. And this excites me, because this means that the energy it takes to accommodate someone with a disability can be leveraged, molded and played with as a force for creativity and innovation,” she reasoned at her TED Talk.
Better designs for everyone
Heidi Schrott of the WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) Magazine’s editorial team concurs in an article entitled Design for the Disabled: “Interestingly, seeking design solutions that meet the needs of the disabled results in a better overall design, benefitting both the able and disabled.”
“New terminology has been coined to describe more inclusive design processes, including terms such as accessible design, barrier-free design and assistive technology. Universal design is a relatively new approach that has emerged from these models and describes the design elements of buildings, products and environments that allow for the broadest range of users and applications,” Schrott notes.
“A fluid kitchen—[the Alno] My Way—that uses an electronically based tracking system to allow cabinets, appliances and even the sink to meet the user. With the push of a button, the kitchen countertop can be raised or the stovetop lowered to the height of a wheelchair. What’s more, people of all ages—and heights—could also enjoy cooking in such a customizable environment,” Schrott also highlights.
Other notable accessible design products that appeal to both the disabled and the fully-abled include the Eone’s The Bradley, a wristwatch with a tactile yet visually discernible face, and Under Armour’s MagZip, a magnetic zipper that can be operated with just one hand.
A billion consumers
According to the 2011 World Report on Disability by the World Health Organization (WHO), 15% of the entire world population—more than 1 billion people—experience a disability. The same study notes that the rates of disability are increasing due to population aging and increases in chronic health conditions. WHO notes that there are 39 million blind people in the world. According to the World Federation of the Deaf, approximately 70 million globally are deaf. Multiple sclerosis alone affects 2.3 million worldwide.
The United Nation’s Secretariat for the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities further notes, “We are all physically disabled at some time in our lives. A child, a person with a broken leg, a parent with a pram, an elderly person, etc. are all disabled in one way or another. Those who remain healthy and able-bodied all their lives are few.”
If industrial designers took into consideration people with disabilities as an integral part of their design thinking, people with disabilities would cease to be the niche market that they currently are and products, services, and technologies for them would cease to be prohibitively expensive. The economies of scale dictates that with the increase in production, the cost of production per item goes down.
Part of the process
Donald Arthur Norman, director of The Design Lab at University of California, declares in his book The Design of Future Things, “The disabled are not just some small, disenfranchised group: they represent all of us. So the first step is education, awareness, and empathy.”
Already many of the world’s leading companies have integrated accessibility into their design process. Mike Shebanek, senior director of accessibility at Yahoo, brings together designers from various tech companies to collaborate on accessibility issues within an organization named Teach Access.
Samsung, which won plaudits for its Blind Cap which vibrates when paralympic swimmers need to tumble turn at the end of the pool, has published its 4C Accessibility Design Principles:
Consideration: “Empathetically designed, with detail.”
Comprehensiveness: “Balanced, equally designed for all.”
Coherence: “Consistent design experience for all products.”
Co-Creation: “Designed Together.”
Specially for the disabled
Regardless of their original intent, off-the-shelf technologies such as motion sensing, facial recognition, speech recognition, artificial intelligence, and haptic surfaces are proving to be extremely useful technologies for the people with disabilities. Some of the many notable products specifically for the disabled have been developed in recent years:
The Dot Watch, the first Braille smartwatch, won the highly-coveted Black Pencil at the D&AD.
The Blitab is a Braille tablet with 14 rows composed of 23 moving cells each that allows the blind to read entire e-books.
BionX emPOWER, a bionic ankle that can sense movement and adjust to terrain, imitates muscles and tendons.
dbGLOVE can turn a hand into a digital input device for deaf blind people who communicate using tactical alphabets by pressing or pinching different parts of the hand represents different letters.
Eyegaze Edge tablet enables people to control a computer using just their eyes by sensing exactly where a person is looking at.
Even without developing new technologies, designers can help normalize the disabled by crafting walking canes, crutches, wheel chairs, and prosthetics with the same attention to style, personal expression, and craftsmanship that they do to clothes, shoes, cars, sofas, and bicycles. Making these aid devices for the disabled more personal and pleasing and less clinical and cold greatly helps people with disability as well the people around them to normalize the situation. Examples of include designer walking canes from Sabi and Top & Derby and wheel chair accessories such as spinners and spoke guards.
Technologies developed for the demands of people with disabilities ultimately benefit all. To take into consideration their needs first and foremost makes for better designs.
