Elasticity in Ability: Viewing (Dis)Ability through Context
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This document discusses elasticity in ability and disability. It references previous research on disability theory, the ability spectrum, and implications. Key points made include that disability refers to how impairment is addressed by society rather than just being an impairment, and that all bodies rely on external support to perform tasks showing the fluid nature of ability. The document advocates designing with accessibility and considering audience stories and adjacencies to better support people across the ability spectrum.
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Elasticity in Ability: Viewing (Dis)Ability through Context
- 1. HELLOChristopher Taylor Edwards // Experience Designer at ThoughtWorks
- 4. PREVIOUS RESEARCH DISABILITY THEORY ABILITY SPECTRUM IMPLICATIONS
- 6. PREVIOUS RESEARCH DISABILITY THEORY ABILITY SPECTRUM IMPLICATIONS
- 7. WHAT CAN A BODY DO? WHAT IS A BODY PERMITTED TO DO?
- 8. “This is a key move in disability advocacy: the distinction between impairment (a unique form of embodiment) and disability (the way impairment is or is not addressed by society) underwrote the original conception of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).” — Kathryn Abrams in Performing Interdependence
- 9. PREVIOUS RESEARCH DISABILITY THEORY ABILITY SPECTRUM IMPLICATIONS
- 10. .REMEDIAL.
- 13. .(DIS)ABLED.
- 14. “Nobody goes for a walk without having something that supports that walk, something outside of ourselves.” — Judith Butler in conversation with Sunny Taylor
- 15. “Maybe we have a false idea that the able bodied person is somehow radically self-sufficient.” — Judith Butler in conversation with Sunny Taylor
- 16. PREVIOUS RESEARCH DISABILITY THEORY ABILITY SPECTRUM IMPLICATIONS
- 18. ‘DISABLED’ DOESN’T DESCRIBE A PERSON, BUT A PERSON’S RELATIONSHIP WITH THEIR CONTEXT..
Notes de l'éditeur
- SLIDE 1: Hello I'm Christopher. Thank you to the Verge team for having me here. This place is near and dear to my heart. I graduated from the transdisciplinary design program. I've been vetted with transdisciplinary thinking for at least the last two years. I am a product strategist and experience designer at ThoughtWorks here in New York City.
- SLIDE 2: Deaf I am also deaf. I have been profoundly deaf for the last ten years. I was raised oral but started losing my hearing in high school. There are some transcribers along the side who are typing this conversation. If you would like to see what that's like, this is meaning-for-meaning transcription and not word for word. You can pull that up on your phone and see how it looks and what that experience is like. I'll leave that URL up for one more second. It's east.typewell.com/ffacfjlc.
- SLIDE 3: Elasticity in Ability I'll be talking about elasticity in ability, viewing disability in context. My interest in elasticity or what interests me about this conversation is elasticity in time as well as plasticity of time. My talk today will be about understanding ability in time and context.
- SLIDE 4: Agenda First, I'll talk about my previous research. Then I will go through some disability theory. Then I'm going to talk about the ability spectrum. Then we will close with the implications for design and designers.
- SLIDE 5: Conversational Diagram First, my previous research. I was looking at the future of work, especially as it relates to mixed communications studies. I was looking at deaf and hard of hearing in the workplace as they transition from school to careers. I was interested in the social tools that people need in order to use access tech. Access tech changes. We all have personal preferences. I was looking at it in terms of how someone with a communications barrier introduces technology into their workplace and negotiates those conversations. I reframed what that conversation looks like if we're talking about elasticity in time. We have a conversation. [On screen.] We have two people. It's one on one and in the moment. With someone who has barriers to communication, it's extremely anxiety producing. The feedback loop only increases the anxiety. We have to hack our way through that conversation. What happens if you extend the conversation back to an earlier time and negotiate that conversation ahead of time, while planning out the conversation for yourself as well as other people? That was stretching where the starting point of the conversation was.
- SLIDE 6: Disability Theory Next is disability theory. I researched disability theory. As a gay man, I appreciated the intersection between disability theory and queer and gender theory. I looked at the writing of Kathryn Abrams, a law professor at Berkeley. She wrote an article where she unpacked disability in terms of understand a framework. In her article, which was called Performing Interdependence she talked to a disability advocate, Sunny Taylor.
- SLIDE 7: What is a body permitted to do? They asked what a body can do, or what is a body permitted to do and what grants that permission? For Abrams, she wanted to understand the Americans with Disability Act and how radical it was. It just celebrated it's anniversary last year.
- SLIDE 8: Kathryn Abrams’ Quote To her this was radical and we haven't caught up to it in separating impairment in environments.
- SLIDE 9: Ability Spectrum This separation that the Americans with Disabilities Act addresses between abled and disabled, abled being core to ourselves and disabled being the object. The environment disables you. This is key to understanding the disability spectrum. Disability is not a statuc state. It's not embodied in an individual. This is important to understanding in disabilities. My question is, does it change when you think of the person as deaf, or crippled, or however you want to talk about it? You separate out that they are abled at their core and that it's the environment that disables them.
- SLIDE 10: Remedial This is how we approach disability. It's remedial. It's something to be fixed. It's fixed with external tools. These tools ignore the systems around them. These are just tools, right? If you think about other systems that may or may not support ability you have these other affordances.
- SLIDE 11: Ramp Let's talk about ramps! love them, and I think they are a great metaphor. They are a metaphor for ease of use and welcoming. Here we have a ramp.
- SLIDE 12: Full Ramp Except dammit there's a planter at the top! You couldn't use this! This is an accessibility fail! But it's more than that, it's an example of how moment to moment your ability shifts. You are in a wheelchair, and you find that even though there's a ramp, you can't get into the building! Your ability is in flux even with access around you.
- SLIDE 13: (Dis)Abled Now take this woman. She looks like she has it all! A healthy baby, this kitchen stand, multiple electronic devices. She's white! She's got the world in her hand! Except, is she disabled? We don't know. Two things -- and she's just got one hand! She's carrying a baby. Her assets are restricted. She has to use that mixer with one hand. Then she could have hidden impairments, like psychological impairments that we can't see. Or social, psychological language -- we don't know if she speaks English. Things around her are only in English instructions.
- SLIDE 14: Butler Quote I will go back to Butler. No one goes for a walk . . . [On screen.] I love this quote. I come back to it all the time. In the past, I talked about interdependence using this quote. But a key word here is "nobody." She's talking about Sunny Taylor who uses a wheelchair, but no one goes for a walk alone. We all use systems. Like regulatory systems that regulate the size of the sidewalk. Then there are rules and laws about cars not running you over while you cross the street. Things like this.
- SLIDE 15: Butler Quote 2 Maybe we have a false idea that the able bodied person is radically self sufficient. This is key in talking about the ability spectrum. We must understand that we are not as abled as we think we are.
- SLIDE 16: Implications Now, let's transition to the implications for design.
- SLIDE 17: Audience Stories, Adjacencies, Be Selfish To me, there are three areas we should think about the ability spectrum in design. One is audience stories, or user stories. No one really likes that word, user, though. Then adjacencies and be selfish.
- SLIDE 18: Disabled doesn’t describe a person… Disabled doesn't describe a person, but their relationship to their context. How does this fit into audience stories? Consider how we tell them. When we think about accessibility we know there are regulations and requirements, but we think about disabled as a separate category. Think about those places where abilities are restricted, like the one-arm super mom, this is another way you can think about disabilities in disabling environments. Do you think about social systems in terms of the person described? The person who is disabled by their situation or their environment? This is the opposite of this view. It's a view of disability thats' small and changing.
- SLIDE 19: Adjacencies Adjacent Users. Lots of people talk about access and talking about new products in access technology. But these are so focused on the person that NEEDS the access that they forget why others will participate. Think about . . . The ramps for wheelchairs on sidewalks. Or closed captioning. These technologies -- other people realize they can use them too. You can watch at work without blasting the audio. This comes up when you talk about communications barriers too. I know for those who English is a second language, the English on television is very fast and hard to process and you lose that empathy due to the stream. People find that using the audio with the captions is a great way to advance language learning. But this is an adjacent use others didn't originally think about. Did you know that the person who traded the internet particle to make e-mail work, that man was deaf. Vincent Cerf He knew it would be for communication, but in the back of his head, he knew it was a text based way for him to communicate with his coworkers.
- SLIDE 20: Selfish You So selfishness! Let's think about that in accessibility. Accessibility is selfish, right? You are selfish and I will let you be that way. I'm borrowing this from Adrian Roselli He's a disability expert in Buffalo. He talks about accessibility and selfishness in thinking about the future you. We will all get old. We will all be carrying groceries and trying to get through a door while looking at our phones at the same time. How many people are designing for iPhones but not the 65 and older set? Most of us will be there eventually. I love you all but you will all get old! It's just true! So in the future, think selfish and think about your changing abilities.
- SLIDE 21: Your Ability is Elastic In conclusion, your ability is elastic and not just the person with an impairment. People respond to their environments. We are responsible for how enabling or disabling these systems are. Respond to this imperative and be selfish and rethink about how you talk about user stories and how this shifts context and ability. Thank you.