Reframing Disability for Universal Design

by Xiqing Wang

I read Microsoft’s Radical Bet on a New Type of Design Thinking by Cliff Kuang. It talks about disability as an engine of innovation, and outlines how Microsoft used this kind of thinking to reinvent their design process.

Before PPAT, I had heard of the term “universal design,” but I had never thought about how this concept involves people with disabilities. It sounds ignorant, and that’s because it is. As a person who can currently only think of one instance where she feels slightly inconvenienced – reaching the very top shelf at a grocery store – I would say that there isn’t too much of a mismatch between myself and my surroundings. I had never needed to think too critically about how design involves disability. 

“Disability is an engine of innovation simply because no matter what their limitations, humans have such a relentless drive to communicate that they’ll invent new ways to do so, in spite of everything.”

According to the article, in 1808, Pellegrino Turri built the first typewriter to help his blind significant other write letters more legibly. In 1872, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone to aid in his work with people with hearing disabilities. In 1972, Vint Cerf started the roots of email to help him communicate with his wife, who was deaf, while he was away at work.

I was admittedly a little awed. I had no idea.

Knowing, now, that many inventions that make my life immensely easier – the elevator, the curb cut, the telephone, email, etc. – may never had existed, but for considering disabilities, reframes the way that I think about much of the world around me. It’s pretty incredible to think that in empathizing with others, people create things that we might never have created ourselves. By designing with disabilities in mind, not only are products more “universal” in the sense that people with disabilities can also use them, but whatever design aspect that made the product “universal” may actually make that product better for all other common consumers.

“Microsoft is starting with the analogues. They’re seeking out the disabled and the different, confident that they’ve already invented exactly the solutions that the rest of us need.”

One of the design frameworks typically used is built around assumptions of personas who might use the product. This doesn’t necessarily apply to PPAT, since we have specified clients whom we are tailoring projects toward. However, it is interesting to think that the previously mentioned design framework doesn’t consider the fact that humans and their capabilities are constantly changing. I believe the ultimate goal of the article is to highlight the notion that in bringing a set of users that live lives differently from most people – one example being users who have disabilities – inclusive design can reveal what is most user-friendly to the most amount of people. This, in turn, yields design that can accommodate not only different types of people, but also the different changes that those people will undergo in a lifetime. That sounds like truly “universal design” to me.