Something cool that is not happening in London for once!

[cosmolinguist]

I love this, it's so heartening to see engineering students working on something that's actually about disabled inclusion rather than disability dongles like "what if your white cane needed an app."

Lancaster engineers enable people with sight loss to “touch and see” museum exhibits

Happily, I have a connection to Lancaster that I can exploit to see friends as well as go see this! I'm really interested in the "haptic stand," as well as the lithophanes (first time I've heard of those!).

Comments

[cosmicjellyfish]

This is very cool (and yay for non-London-centricity!) Also, thank you for introducing me to the term “disability dongle”.

[cosmolinguist]

It's an incredibly useful term, that thing I've linked there is long but I just love it, it has clarified my thinking around this a lot.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

We need programmers with disabilities, who will make more things that are actually useful.

[forests_of_fire]

I actually saw a video about something like that! Alas, my browser crashed and I lost the link.

[silveradept]

That's very interesting, and I'd like to know how the experience goes if you get the opportunity to work with these installations. This feels like one of those things that might be useful because it was trialed with and gets feedback from people who actually have the conditions that they're trying to find accessibility for.

[lagertha_the_warrior]

That looks fun, hope you enjoy it!

I read the disability dongle article, first time hearing it. It seems like the design students are so out of touch, like they don't consult anyone with a disability for their project. Perhaps they don't? My guess is they're encouraged by their teachers and the university/school to design things "for the people" because it makes them look good.

And now I want a lithophane of my own...

[cosmolinguist]

Yeah in so many areas of life, it seems like disabled people either aren't meaningfully consulted on these things (like, they might get one guy's friend/sibling/whatever to see what they think of it, and then assume all disabled people are the same), or more often they aren't consulted early enough: they might be presented with "here's this idea to solve this problem"...but it's never "how would you like this problem to be solved" or even "is this a particular problem for you."

I think when you're an engineering or design or whatever student you have particular skills and things you've been taught, so you look at the world through that lens and think about how you can apply it. Which is fine! But that's how you get people trying to solve everything with apps, or trying to make wheelchairs that can climb stairs, or whatever. What would actually help more people is just having step-free access, but that's not "innovative" or technological, that's a boring policy solution that has to be pursued by people with different skillsets, not engineering or design.

[lagertha_the_warrior]

You make a good point about the step-free access. I think this type of thing happens a lot, not just with disabled communities. It's the whole issue of telling other people "how to" be, instead of really listening to what they actually need. A good example is indigenous health issues here in Australia... there are a lot of top down approaches that just don't work.

[jesse_the_k]

My, their project was so utilitarian (in the good way)!

Anti-dongleism for the win.