How do various users’ distinctive identities and abilities affect our tools’ functionality — and how do those tools shape their users’ subjectivity? What implicit politics-of-use are built into our tools? How can we design analog and digital tools that accommodate users with varying abilities — and what are the implications of making tools “for everybody”?
To be completed for today’s class:
- Bess Williamson, “From Accessible to Universal: Design in the Late Twentieth Century,” Accessible America: A History of Disability and Design (NYU Press, 2019): 147-84 [please recall that you’ll be prompted to log in to access our copyrighted readings].
- Check out artist-designer Sara Hendren’s work.
- “The Universal Page,” 99% Invisible 360 (July 2, 2019) [podcast: 41:47].
- If you’ve chosen to respond to today’s texts, please post your reading response by 11:59pm the night before class!
