Friday, November 7, 2008

Inclusion By Design I Universal Design and Civil Rights

“I see the work of inclusion as the last frontier of desegregation. If you read the brief from Brown vs. the Board of Ed. the board of education argued that if we let blacks be integrated the next thing you know is that we’ll let people with disabilities be integrated.” 
-Joe Petner

Easy. It is so easy for designers to see the world as a market for consumers and producers. It is so easy to design for the group with the most purchasing power, to analyze data utilizing exclusion as a marketing strategy. It is so easy to begin by designing for our own demographic group, basing our design decisions on our own preferences. Statistics keep our focus on household products for women and sporting goods for boys. By designing only for the wealthiest, healthiest, most statistically normative groups we create a world that excludes everyone who falls outside the small world of our own experiences.

In class someone asked if we could ever design for people in other cultures. I believe designers should treat every project and every user group as if we know nothing about them; because it is only by abandoning our assumptions that we can address real needs. We do not need to look beyond our borders or even outside our own small community to see blatant examples of designers’ complicity in civil rights violations and human suffering. Problems caused not by intentional malice and neglect but by a dangerous combination of market driven thought and ignorance of how to design for people whose experiences we do not share. Of course, anyone who knows me knows where this is going. Disability.

This week I had the privilege of attending a screening of a really great film by Dan Habib called Including Samuel. This film is a brief look at inclusive education for people with disabilities, particularly focused on Habib’s son Samuel, who has cerebral palsy. It addresses inclusion as a civil rights issue. The film asks us to overcome prejudice, discrimination and low expectations. Betsey McNamara, Samuel’s mom talks about discovering that Samuel had a disability. She said, “All the things you imagine for your child are things I was afraid about. How could he run around the playground and play kickball when he can’t run? How can he yak on the phone with his teenage friends when he has trouble talking? How could he get a full education and go to college when he can’t hold a pencil?” I believe the answers to all of these questions lie within the power of design. Samuel’s determination and will, his warmth and personality will do most of the work, but by designing products and environments that include him, such as better wheelchairs and schools with equitable access designers can give Samuel the freedom and opportunity to be a doctor or an astronaut. It is not enough to adapt Samuel to the world, we stand to gain so much by adapting the world for people like Samuel. They can open our minds and teach us new ways of communicating, new ways of learning and new ways of seeing the world.

However, to design for people with disabilities requires a leap. If we have never been disabled we can’t understand the disability experience. We can’t know how it feels to have to wait forty-five minutes for someone who can operate the wheelchair lift. To be stared at while we use it. We can’t know how empowering, not imprisoning a wheelchair can be. Or can we? By truly taking the time to ask questions and listen to the answers we can design products and services that will really work for the people who use them. While this is obviously necessary when designing across cultures and abilities, it is equally important when we design for our own demographic. We can never assume we know best what someone else needs or wants, and as designers it is our obligation to explore the needs of the people we are trying to design for.

I’d like to add this thought from Joe Petner, the principal of a pioneering inclusive school: “I see the work of inclusion as the last frontier of desegregation. If you read the brief from Brown vs. the Board of Ed. the board of education argued that if we let blacks be integrated the next thing you know is that we’ll let people with disabilities be integrated.” So this week, while we celebrate a monumental step forward for civil rights let’s not forget how far we still have to come and how much we still need to learn. For people with disabilities, universal design can be a vehicle for social activism and the achievement of long overdue civil rights. Design for everyone. It’s easy.

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