Welcome to #NoBodyIsDisposable, a web resource created by students in Digital 258 and English 216 at the University of Michigan. This website provides examples of local access projects in Ann Arbor that focus both on the built environment and digital spaces. The aim was to create projects that also kept accessibility in mind. These projects bridged academic as well as local community spaces. Projects use a range of media, including podcasts and zines, among others. This page was collectively authored by all of us in the class.
Accessibility isn’t an end point — it’s an ongoing process.
Looking at accessibility from an end-point perspective leads to people framing accessibility as though it is a list to check off. Instead, when observing it as a process, we are able to constantly change the landscape of accessibility to suit the needs of the collective. The definition of accessibility changes from individual to individual. Everyone has different needs which means that accessibility is thought of from many different viewpoints.
Ethical digital futures are those that imagine disability as a crucial part of our everyday lived experience.
An ethical digital future would acknowledge that disability permeates every part of our lives. Accessibility features are not only important to people with disabilities but can also improve the user experience for everyone. Accessibility efforts have been implemented through law but are regularly known to not have been fulfilled (Costanza-Chock 2020). Due to the lack of accessibility many people ultimately end up having a worse experience (such as no sno-cones!). Oftentimes accessible design is overlooked in the name of beautiful design; only when we start to re-define beauty by including accessibility as a criterion for beauty will we make significant progress towards widespread accessible design.
This semester, we’ve spent a lot of time talking about disability dongles, which might be described as useless (and often harmful) technologies that are supposedly designed for disabled people (Jackson et al. 2022). Disability dongles are usually not very accessible and are tailored more towards nondisabled people rather than those with disabilities. It is unfortunate that a lot of the products intended for disabled individuals do not actually meet our/their access needs. These disability dongles often prioritize the convenience of nondisabled users over the genuine accessibility requirements of individuals with disabilities, highlighting the need for more radical and thoughtful design processes (Jackson et al. 2022).
Disability identity is an always-thing in motion.
If you aren’t disabled now, you likely will be at some point in the future, whether due to aging, injury, or changes in how you experience your mind or body. These experiences may be temporary, or they may carry on for the rest of your life. In any case, these experiences demand a shift in perspective that can be difficult and sometimes abrupt, but can be made easier by engaging in community with others who share those experiences. There is strength in community and sharing stories of disability, and these experiences need to be at the forefront of our conversations about accessibility. Disabled ingenuity has proven many times to be capable of rising to the challenge (Mauldin, 2022).
Disabled engineering has been the brilliance behind solving a large number of problems throughout history, and will continue to be responsible for more.
References
Costanza-Chock, S. (2020). Design justice: Community-led practices to build the worlds we need. MIT. https://designjustice.mitpress.mit.edu/
Jackson, L., Haagaard, A., & Williams, R. (2022, April 19). Disability dongle. Platypus: The CASTAC Blog. https://blog.castac.org/2022/04/disability-dongle/
Mauldin, L. (2022). Care tactics: Hacking an ableist world. The Baffler, 64. https://thebaffler.com/salvos/care-tactics-mauldin
