Assignment 3: Stigmatization and Normality

A statistic conducted in 2010 estimated the number of visually impaired people to be around 285 million, among them 39 million are blind [1]. This indicates that visual impairments are widely spread worldwide and makes it a problem worth addressing. The World Health Organization (WHO) groups visual impairments in two categories, low vision and blindness.

Stigmatization of visually impaired people can include moral disapproval, denigration, and avoidance. This stigmatization can play a negative role in the person’s self esteem, adjustment and learning process [2].
Often the stigmatization of visually impaired people is not only the problem of not being accepted in the society but also when people do not know how to deal with them, e.g. When someone tries to help a blind person when they do not want to be offered helped. This happens often because the tools that the visually impaired people use might not function properly, miss some functionality or are poorly designed.

The way I see it, making a visually impaired person “normal” does not include hiding their disability. It is instead by making them able to perform the tasks they require done without help from other people.

In the following paragraph I will try to point out some design issues in the tools that are made for visually impaired people to use and propose some design ideas to tackle those issues.

• Navigation is one of the biggest problems that visually impaired people face in their daily life. A lot of navigation tools have been developed in attempt to address this issue but often suffer from design and accuracy issues. After looking into some navigation tools that are optimized for the use of visually impaired people I realized that most of them use sound to give the person the navigation information. This is either using earphones or speakers. In my opinion, using sound is stigmatizing because in the case of having earphones on, it interferes with the visually impaired person’s most sense, his hearing, leaving them unaware of what might happen around them which might leads to situations where the person is stigmatized. Using speakers causes a bigger issue since it could be disturbing to the people around, while the visually impaired person might not see it they are likely to feel it. While sound is crucial in some cases, e.g. telling the person what they are facing, touch could be a very useful sense to deliver a big portion of the navigation information. e.g. a wrist band equipped with directional vibrators which provides direction information to reduce the amount of sound information.
• Crossing roads is also one of the issues that can be problematic for visually impaired people. In most developed counties, traffic lights are equipped with a ticking sound that indicated whether it is OK to cross the road or not. Although this idea is very useful, it is still quite confusing in crossroads where those sounds collide making it difficult to determine which ticking sound is for which crossing. This can result in situations where the person misinterprets the sound and can put their life in danger, let go stigmatizing them. A simple proposed solution for this could be to use a vibrator mounted on the traffic light which vibrates weakly when it’s a red light and strongly when it turns green. This solution can be complimentary to the ticking sounds because providing this solution alone causes an issue when multiple visually impaired people want to cross the same road. This solution will provide certainty to the visually impaired person, saving him from having to ask someone around him or putting him at risk.
• Having a sense of the material a person is walking on is very important to prevent stepping in the wrong place. e.g. the person could slide on some icy ground, step in a whole, etc. This is stigmatizing because it puts the person in position where people might think that he needs help. Which proposes an issue with ultrasound canes that are made to replace traditional canes. While those canes provide information about the distance between the person and facing obstacles, they provide no information about the ground material since using ultrasound for material detection requires a lot of power and accurate receivers. This can be also problematic because a traditional cane has also the purpose of identification. So a good solution in my opinion would be to integrate an ultrasound system within the traditional cane to increment its functionality and keep its advantages.

Most of the ideas I mentioned above are in a way related to changing someone’s location. There are of course many other issues that a visually impaired person can face that require addressing in a more suitable manner.

[1]

D. Pascolini and S. P. Mariotti, “Global estimates of visual impairment: 2010,” Br J Ophthalmol, vol. 96, no. 5, pp. 614–618, May 2012.

[2]

M. Allen and E. Birse, “Stigma and blindness,” J Ophthalmic Nurs Technol, vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 147–152, Aug. 1991.

Reflection 9

Reflection 9

 

The content of the lecture was understood and I have an insight about burnout, which makes me feel that most people are stressed up sometimes because of physical and emotional exhaustion. I think stress is some kind of hidden impairment because some people deny the fact that they are stressed. Burnout doesn’t occur instantly which means that cannot stop doing something and all of a sudden you feel like having burnout. It takes time for it to manifest on somebody and I believe that this makes it much harder to be recognized.

Moreover, people don’t want to be stressed and I think that stress reduces their productivity by making them feel helpless, hopeless and resentful that they can’t even contribute something for the society or develop themselves. During most of my study times, I feel bored and overloaded with assignments and having the determination to do my assignments; I keep postponing doing it some other time but when I realize the due date for submission I feel stress up and I begin to lost interest and motivation to concentrate. I think humans can’t notice burnout when it happens. Some people thing that life is not worth living and when they have experience burnout, they don’t have any hope of positive change in their lives, which the only thing they can do is to commit suicide.

Assignment 3

Stigmatization

The word stigmatization is defined as “A mark of disgrace or infamy”, meaning in the context of social stigmatization someone who sticks out from the group of “normal” individuals in society in some way. I believe that the most intrusive kind of stigmatization is when the person is noticeably different, causing his or her surrounding to pay attention to this difference.

To use the daily life of someone in a wheelchair as an example, they might get a lot of people coming up to them and asking if they need help with anything, and a lot of unwanted attention in general, every time they go outside. Even if this is from well-meaning people that only wants to help it still means that they get a lot of people who are approaching them just because they are in a wheelchair, which reinforces the feeling of exclusion and stigmatization. What I am trying to say with this is that I do not think that most people have negative feelings or attitudes towards people with disabilities, wanting to help someone that you believe need help is not intrinsically negative they are just misguided. If that is true, then this misguidedness can be overcome and a lot of the stigmatization can be avoided.

 

Normality

So how can design help people treat everyone like they are normal individuals? The design goals of creating any aids is of course to enable or help someone perform certain tasks. But when designing aids/tools for people who are dependent on them all day every day then there are other aspects that needs to be considered. When someone is in a situation where they rely on a tool it becomes a big part of their life and can even be a part of their identity, which makes it extra important to create something that they can be proud to use. How this is achieved is hard to determine and will vary from case to case, but I think that people with disabilities want what everyone else want, things that are well designed. Being well designed means that they are aesthetically pleasing, work without technical problems and like I mentioned before that it can perform the task it was made for.

Being normal or not can seem like a binary state, most people are normal and then there are some who are not. But it is not that easy, what is normal for someone is of course something that is decided by the society that they live in. There will always be some qualities that are more normal than others, like being able to see or walk for example, but as modern science and engineering develops those who cannot see or walk are becoming more and more capable of leading a normal life. So there is some kind of “spectrum of normality”, and this is not something that is static but rather something that changes over time, and if this is the case, then the goal should be to widen the spectrum as much as is possible. This is done best by increasing the understanding of people who are different than yourself, being normal does not mean that being the same, it just means being accepted by society. This understanding can best be improved by helping people who are currently “not normal” into being more active and visible in society, I believe that this is best achieved with “non-excluding design”. Meaning to design in order to exclude as few people as possible.

 

Non-excluding design

There are downsides to non-excluding design though. Any solution that is created to, for example, exclude as few people as possible from accessing a public area, is probably going to be more expensive than creating this area for people without any impairments, this of course have to be weighed towards the benefit that is given to people with disabilities. In the book “non-excluding Design” a movie theatre is mentioned in this context. A moviegoer that has to use a wheelchair will miss out on a part of the experience that other moviegoers get since he will have to use an alternate exit, and thereby causing alienation between them. I can see two different design solutions to this, either create better tools that allows people with disabilities to use the same exit as everyone else, or redesign the theatre itself to allow them to keep using their current tools. In order to redesign a movie theatre to cater to as many as possible it is likely going to require a lot of reconstruction. This means that not all movie theatres are going to be able to afford to make these changes which means that the best solution in my opinion is to create some sort of compromise. If a city only has one movie theatre, then that one needs to be as non-excluding as possible but if it is a bigger city with several movie theatres then it might be enough if one or two are adapted. In this way places can be created for these minorities and at the same time it does not create an issue for anyone who want to open a new movie theatre and thereby hindering growth.

Assignment 3: Minimizing stigmatization for Visually Impaired People

In this assignment,I have chosen to write about visually impaired people and how we could design that will minimize stigmatization toward visually impaired people. Stigmatization towards visually impaired people is very common in today’s world. Visual impaired like other impairments have different levels. Someone can see this beautiful world with low vision but for some it is totally black. According to WHO about 65 % of all people who are visually impaired are aged 50 and older, while this age group comprises about 20 % of the world’s population. [1] With an increasing elderly population in many countries, more people are at risk of visual impairments. Sadly in our society ‘s attitude toward visually impaired people are not too positive. We tend to avoid and denigrate them. Because of these social stigmas visually impaired people find very difficult to adjust in the society and sometimes this even cause them hard to get a good job. We often think they are not capable of doing the normal thing because of their disabilities but with good design of the assistive tools, I am sure we can reduce the negative social stigmas toward visually impairment people.

To minimize stigmatization, there are certain aspects we have to think when we are designing tools for visually impaired people. I think the appearance of tool plays an important role to reduce social stigmas. We have seen some cool designed wheelchairs in our lectures. These wheel chairs do not  look like a symbol of impairment instead it has increased social integration for people with disabilities. Another aspect is to design tools that are simple to use and efficient. We have seen some complicated designs for disable people in the course of our lectures. These tools instead of providing assistance they make the life of disabled people even worse.

“The real problem of blindness is not the lack of eyesight.  The real problem is the misunderstanding and lack of information, which exist.  If a blind person has proper training and opportunity, blindness is only a physical nuisance.”[2]. Here I would like to emphasis more about the opportunity for visually impaired people. As a designer I think the opportunity for me is designing better tools for people with disability and impairments. A good design can change the perception of a person towards people with disabilities and broaden the idea of normality. When we talk about normality I think we can’t define it because there is no single person in the world who is actually normal. There is no reason to separate normality and disability because everyone is at some disadvantage at some point in their life. However, we have the capacity to widen the idea of normality by bringing better designs for people with impairments.

One way to broaden normality is to design better assistive tools. There are many assistive tools available for visually impaired people. We also saw few of them from the Korean movie Blind such as white cane and guide dog. Assistive tools like white cane are designed to achieve mobility but it does not help visually impaired people find obstacles at head level and it does not help them to detect hindrance outside its range. One way to broaden normality is to add new functionalities like haptic feedbacks to the existing canes will definitely help visually impaired people feel more safe and comfortable. I think our ongoing project on indoor navigation using visible light is a good example where it provides more accurate navigation. But at the same time the technology should be accessible to most of the visually impaired people so society finds it is common and acceptable. Another way to broaden normality is to education with assistive tools. Visually impaired people are using braille to learn and read letters, but on the other side it is quite difficult to provide education for people with cognitive impairment. We divide the learning atmosphere in our society by creating special schools for students with impairments. It is true they take a longer time to learning things but with the help of better assistive tools we are able to help them learn thing much better and faster. The learning environment for children’s with autism using robots is a very good example. Therefore I think is very important to shift our focus more on integrating people with different kinds of impairment in our society.

In conclusion, I think we have to focus more on the potential of people with disabilities and impairments. Designing better assistive tools for them will unquestionably bring better life experience and reduce stigmatization. But ultimately our society needs to change its attitude towards them so that they can have a normal life too.

Reference:

[1] http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs282/en/

[2] National Federation of the Blind, (1999).  National Federation of the Blind, homepage, [on-line].  http://www.nfb.org.

Assignment 3: Stigmatization and “normality”

In this post I will hypothesize how it’s possible to use design in order to 1) minimize stigmatization, and 2) broaden the “normality” area. I’ve selected wheelchair users as impairment type. As we’ve discussed during this course, (visibly) disabled people are often stigmatized, and one of the reasons for that is because they stand out. Thus, I believe that by broadening the “normality” area, disabled people can be less stigmatized. But how can this be done?

From the lectures, “stigmatization” is defined as “a process where people are discerned as different in any way, by having special needs, using special tools or requiring special solutions”, that is, not “normal”. So if a person looks “normal”, is that enough to prevent stigmatization?

Many people with a walking impairment have to use a wheelchair. As mentioned in the course, wheelchairs aren’t very aesthetically pleasing, and there aren’t many customization options. The design focus is obviously on safety only, and since their customers kind of have to buy them anyway I suppose there’s not a big need to make the wheelchairs look more attractive. Not to mention that they’re kind of bulky and unpractical in many situations, and many people pity the wheelchair users because they can’t walk. In class we’ve theorized about what if we can make wheelchairs cool, and to focus on people’s abilities rather than their disabilities. Cost is an issue because all supportive tools have to be thoroughly safety-tested, and there aren’t that many users for them either. But let’s say that this isn’t a problem. If wheelchairs looked less like an aid for moving around and more like an accessory, would that remove the stigma that exists for wheelchair users?

Well, they’d still be using a “special tool” and need “special solutions”, so probably not entirely. On the other hand, in the best case the stigma could be more positive than a negative one. In class we heard about an attempt to design an entrance for children who couldn’t take the stairs. In the end, they made the elevator look like a rocket, which made abled children want to ride with it, too. While this is very much an improvement, is there another solution for minimizing stigmatization?

During this course a classmate and I have been reading up on exoskeletons. They can be used to enhance human abilities like endurance and lifting (Zoss, Kazerooni, and Chu, 2006), for rehabilitation training (Rajesh, 2013; Veneman, Kruidhof, Hekman, Ekkelenkamp, Van Asseldonk, and van der Kooij, 2007; Mao and Agrawal, 2012; Tsagarakis and Caldwell, 2003; Nilsson, Vreede, Häglund, Kawamoto, Sankai, and Borg, 2014), and to give people the ability to walk again (Wang et al., 2015). While cost is very much an issue today (Nowogrodzki, 2015), some are of the belief or hope that in the future, everyone will wear them (Ferris, 2009; Herr, 2009). And while some models available today look really good (image 1), there’s even some research on soft exoskeletons (image 2) that can be worn under clothes if the batteries and the motors get a bit smaller and repositioned (ExtremeTech, 2014), making them invisible. Truly, were exoskeletons like those available for all wheelchair users, I believe that would minimize stigmatization. And if the day comes when everyone uses an exoskeleton, it’d surely broaden the “normality” area as well.

Image 1: HAL exoskeleton from Cyberyne

Image 2: Soft exoskeleton developed by Harvard scientists

Another, perhaps easier way to broaden the normality spectrum today, is exposure. As I’ve discussed in previous blog comments/reflections, I believe that education and having more disabled people in movies and other media would help to reduce stigmatization. However, as this isn’t about design, I’ll leave this tangent.

For a more general but more abstract way to use design, one thing I can think of is to design things so that they can be used in more ways than one. For example, most pairs of scissors are made to fit right-handed people (as the majority of people are right-handed), but there are some that are designed for left-handed people as well. Apparently there are even some pairs of scissors that are ambidextrous, meaning they work for both left- and right-handed people just as well (or bad?). While this is probably not applicable to everything and could possibly obstruct the use for some people (like perhaps the ambidextrous scissor is more difficult to use than a right-handed scissor for a right-handed person and a left-handed scissor for a left-handed person), I like this kind of thinking. Instead of having special tools for the minority of people, everyone can use the same things.

However, wheelchairs can be used by people without disabilities, but obviously they don’t use them. How can we design a wheelchair so that everyone uses them? Even if we could do it, for example by making it a status symbol, we probably wouldn’t want to. Even though it would certainly be considered “normal” to use a wheelchair if everyone uses one, it’d not be a very practical solution. Especially when so many people today lead quite sedentary lives. It’s probably better to try to design wheelchairs so that they look more like something one gets because one want to use, rather than has to.

For example, I think that some of the designs that we’ve seen during the lectures look pretty good. A segway-like wheelchair (image 3) that the user can stand up in looked rather stylish and reminded me more of a luxurious chair than a medical tool to me. As we’ve learned during this course, being looked down upon all the time can affect people’s self-esteem, so designing a wheelchair that one can stand in seems like a very good idea to me. Not to mention that this solution can probably help to prevent sores from sitting, and the disabled person might even be able to navigate in narrow areas that aren’t built to be accessible by people in wheelchairs.

Image 3: A wheelchair design by Jake Eadie

The other attempts to design a wheelchair that can raise the disabled person to standing height were a bit more flawed, as we’ve discussed in class (for example the one that balances precariously on two wheels looked unstable and risky), but at least it’s good to know that some people make an effort to minimize the stigma for wheelchair users.

In the end, I believe that the best thing we as designers can do is to use a proper design process, just like we should when not specifically designing for people with an impairment. I think the universal design process that we learned about in class summarizes a good design process for most cases: Get a good understanding of the situation, what problem is to be solved, make the needs into design requirements, think of solutions and try them out, repeat until a prototype works. As we have learned repeatedly in our Master program in human computer interaction, there’s no good substitute for real users. As mentioned in this course, it doesn’t seem likely that some of the previously mentioned wheelchair designs were ever tested by real users. Indeed, more research with real users is needed, especially so for new technologies such as exoskeletons. According to Pons (2010), exoskeletons won’t be widely accepted in our society before the users are central in the design, development, and validation of them, and cosmetics, aesthetics, and dependability are important factors to be considered for this to become reality.

References

ExtremeTech. (2014). Harvard scientists design soft robotic exoskeleton to reduce fatigue and injuries. Found 2015-12-04, from http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/190025-harvard-scientists-design-soft-robotic-exoskeleton-to-reduce-fatigue-and-injuries

Ferris, D. P. (2009). The exoskeletons are here. Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation, 6(17). doi:10.1186/1743-0003-6-17

Herr, H. (2009). Exoskeletons and orthoses: classification, design challenges and future directions. Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation, 6(21). doi:10.1186/1743-0003-6-21

Mao, Y. & Agrawal, S. K. (2012). Design of a cable-driven arm exoskeleton (CAREX) for neural rehabilitation. IEEE Transactions on Robotics, 28(4), 922-931. doi:10.1109/TRO.2012.2189496

Nilsson, A., Vreede, K. S., Häglund, V., Kawamoto, H., Sankai, Y., & Borg, J. (2014). Gait training early after stroke with a new exoskeleton – the hybrid assistive limb: a study of safety and feasibility. Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation, 11(92).

Nowogrodzki, A. (2015). Softly-softly approach. New scientist, 228(3043), 24.

Pons, J., L. (2010). Rehabilitation exoskeletal robotics. IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Magazine, 29(3), 57-63.

Rajesh, S. M. (2013). Design of human exo-skeleton suit for rehabilitation of hemiplegic people. Procedia Engineering, 51, 544-553.

Tsagarakis, N. G. & Caldwell, D. G. (2003). Development and control of a ‘soft-actuated’ exoskeleton for use in physiotherapy and training. Autonomous Robots, 15(1), 21-33.

Veneman, J. F., Kruidhof, R., Hekman, E. E., Ekkelenkamp, R., van Asseldonk, E. H., & van der Kooij, H. (2007). Design and evaluation of the LOPES exoskeleton robot for interactive gait rehabilitation. IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, 15(3), 379-386.

Wang, S., Wang, L., Meijneke, C., van Asseldonk, E., Hoellinger, T., Cheron, G., … & van der Kooij, H. (2015). Design and control of the MINDWALKER exoskeleton. IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, 23(2), 277-286.

Zoss, A. B., Kazerooni, H., & Chu, A. (2006). Biomechanical design of the Berkeley lower extremity exoskeleton (BLEEX). IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, 11(2), 128-138. doi:10.1109/TMECH.2006.871087

Image references

Image 1: http://robotenomics.com/2014/04/03/a-random-walk-with-hal-the-friendly-exoskeleton/

Image 2: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/530751/motorized-pants-to-help-soldiers-and-stroke-victims/

Image 3: http://www.gadgetsavy.com/gadgets/gadgets/228-future-elevating-wheelchair.html

Assignment 3. It should all be normal

The process of minimising stigmatisation and increasing the normality of the lives of those with an amputation, whether it be congenital or not, should be an indispensable part of the process for designing prosthetics. These aids are essential, mainly to the everyday lives of those with an amputation, but also for their inclusion into society, allowing the same level of movement and freedom that is experienced by those without this impairment.

For those who have an amputation of some sort, a prosthesis is often used to allow them more freedom and comfort in everyday life. It may be that some people with an amputation find no need for a prosthesis and find life easier without one, but for others, often those with a leg amputation, a prosthetic makes it easier to move around and is therefore essential. Amputations can occur from birth, or occur often in accidents and due to illness. Particularly for those who suffer from amputations later in life, the period of adaptation to using a new limb can be quite long, but may be more of an assumed step to take as they’ve experienced life with the lost limb. They also have to deal with what could be a more confronting psychological effect, both for themselves and friends and family, that they are now a bit different. The impact of losing something may make it initially more difficult to lesson the normality area.

Stigmatisation in itself is a distasteful ideal that naturally excludes and targets someone, merely for being (what some consider to be) different. There are many ways in which the design of prosthetics can enhance or lesson this opinion. Simple designs that resemble other limbs are an easy way to de-stigmatise prosthetics, mainly as they ‘blend-in’. However obvious and accepted this style of design is now, there is also a need to consider that perhaps people don’t want to have to fit in with everyone else. With continually advancing technologies and designs, the chance to have prosthetics that can look like anything are more and more common. An example of this was a young boy born with a partially developed right arm who received a 3D printed bionic arm that looked like Iron Man’s. For a seven year old, this prosthetic, though definitely standing out- would serve to make him feel better about having one. It is no longer another ‘boring’ prosthetic, but a cool toy that his friends can admire. The issue with stigmatising designs is that they can signal someone out as having ‘a problem.’ Perhaps allowing someone (and enabling them by decreasing costs, etc) to design their own aid that not only helps functionality-wise but enhances their individuality, will de-stigmatise the opinion that it’s something negative. Maybe then it can be seen rather as something positive and personal. Retired para-athlete Aimee Mullins proposes this view in a TED talk, stating that she ‘‘moved away from the need to replicate humanness.’’[1] According to Mullins, the growing propensity for children to view technology and cyber beings as common is, in a way, lessening the stigmatisation attached to prosthetics. They are more used to seeing people who are, in some way different, whether it be physical, mental or simply how someone dresses. Prosthetics can stand out in today’s society, not necessarily as an aid, but perhaps something as simple as an accessory. Regardless of the look of the prosthesis though, it is essential that the technology involved doesn’t limit the actions of the user in anyway. A product that enables them to complete the needed task, is the basis for their existence after all.

The ‘normality area’ is a concept that has many similar points to lessening stigmatisation. It is here that awareness and education should increase in focus, and where design needs to be inclusive, allowing the individual to choose what they wish, and educating those around them that this is ‘normal.’ This is especially beneficial in regards to children, where there should be an emphasis on communicating that disabilities such as amputations should not be seen as being disadvantages, but perhaps just a slightly different way of life. It should be seen as normal, not as a negative and tragic part of someone’s life that invites pity. In terms of design, making sure the technology is advanced enough to not exclude them from activities (as far as possible) is important.

Ultimately, design in regards to decreasing stigmatisation and increasing the normality area is important as long as it supports the wishes of those who use the products. If they feel comfortable using the prosthesis and it fulfils the need, then through education and exposure, the normality area should be expanded and the rest of the public shouldn’t see prosthetics as mere aids.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ0iMulicgg

Assignment 3: Designs for Blindness

 

Yahan Li (Yahan.Li.2556@student.uu.se)

Blindness can cause distinguished stigmatization because more than 80% of perceptions are based on visual sense and when a blind person wants to act like others, it will be really easy to tell he or she has visual impairment. However, living in a different way is not the synonym of stigmatization. Apart from changing the social bias, we can also use better non-excluding designs to minimize stigmatization and broaden the definition of normality.

Figure 1: Cellphone for blind people

In my view, minimizing stigmatization is to offer specific supports for people with impairments in a more appropriate way that can make them less different from people without impairments. While broadening the meaning of normality means to offer essentially the same supports for both groups.

 

And in this article, I would like to present my ideas of better designs aiming at helping blind people. Please be aware of that some of them have already made significant progress while some are kind of utopia from my wild imagination.

 

1. Minimizing stigmatization

(1) Cool protecting glasses

Except for the concern of aesthetics, 80% of the blind people have weak abilities to see, so the glasses are useful to protect the remaining vision. By designing beautiful protecting glasses for them, the outlook of blind people can be more appealing and they can show their unique personality. Short-sighted people also wear glasses but they have more stylish choices. Therefore, it is vital for blind people have brilliant designed glasses of their special use.

 

(2) Walking support

We can design dedicate walking support device embedded in usual things to reduce stigmatization, such as navigational smart cap, glasses or even jackets. Using canes or guide dogs are useful to some extent but they can cause distinctive awareness, which may turn to stigmatization. By offering embedded walking support, blind people can reach the places as they like without clearly “extra”  help.

And since nowadays blind people cannot fully rely on the walking cane or  urban infrastructure, these technical designs may as well provide more secure and efficient walking and navigational support.

 

(3)Universal websites and other electronical devices

In 21^st century we are all living in the information society. It is hard to imagine living without computer. The Internet is full of useful information resources so we should not exclude blind people from this wonderful treasure. We can add sound information to help blind people know the structure of the website and choose which part they want to have a deep insight. The computer system, both the software and hardware, should be built in an accessible way, too. Perhaps we will have changeable interface in the future so that blind people can feel the uneven surface of picture and Braille.

 

2. Broadening the area of normality

 

(1) Smart Home/ Smart building

Figure 2:Blueprint of smart home

 

It is a great challenge for the blind to tell the location of furniture, the water tap and other daily equipment. If houses can provide audio support and haptic clues, it will be easier for them to do indoors activities. For example, blind people can ask a remote controller or a robot where the stove is and it will guide the user to get it. And the user can follow a line of dots to reach to the rotary knob and he or she knows the temperature settings by tactile clues. A timer will start when the stove begins working and the user can easily know the time and current temperature of cooking. Maybe the controller or robot can give suggestion about when to turn of the fire, too.

Smart home/ smart buildings have been popular concepts in recent years. It seems that we take it for granted that using intelligent devices in rooms is convenient and helpful, so we can naturally derive that for people with visual impairment it is certainly acceptable to receive help from well-designed products.

There are plenty of things to realize with smart home/ smart buildings. If the blind can deal with daily trivial things simply by some feedback from the system, they can gain better self-images and broaden the meaning of normality.

 

(2) “Synesthesia” Design

 

Synesthesia, a neurological phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. (Reference: Wikipedia, the column“Synesthesia”) Here I use it as a metaphor implying using other sensory to create visual image. For patients with synesthesia, they can see colors of the sounds, see flavors and etc. If a person just has damage of eyeballs, not including the brain or nerves, there is a chance for him or her to “see” images by other sensory organs. There is already a design to put stimulating sensors below the tongues to help the blind people get sort of view in their brain. (Reference: BrainPort, sensory information can be sent to one’s brain via a signal from the BrainPort (and its associated sensor) that terminates in an electrode array which sits atop the tongue) A relevant product is BrailleSight, which can help blind people “see” by tactile feedback.

This method can be widely used even among normal people. Some people are much admired to those having synesthesia since it sounds amazing to be able to listen to colors. Some treat this disease as gifts by god. It is really thrilling that we are possibly to create the connections between different senses and surely this design can broaden the area of being normal.

Figure 3: Synesthesia — listening to colors

 

(3) Audio book and voice reader

Children and people spending a lot of time in commuting enjoy listening to audio books. So it is a good idea for blind people to learn from audio books. “Normal” people can hear texts, so do blind people. However, many books are not available in the audio format now and some books cannot be listened to (e.g. dictionaries and encyclopedia). Therefore, it is important to help blind people get rid of the limited choice range of audio books. And an automatic voice reader can help with that by scanning the text and read it for the user. We have this type of product now but there is still room for improvement of accuracy. And maybe in the future we can use the scanner to tell the user what a picture or diagram looks like.

 

Assignment 3 : “Not normal” is the new “normal”

We live in a non-utopian world where problems like stigmatization and normality exist in the society. Even though we try to avoid such terms and act as if we are not part of this, the truth is, we are carrying these forward every single day whether we like it or not! The best way to deal with this is to first accept the simple fact that stigmatization exists in full swing in the society. There are people with impairments who have special needs; we have to understand the cause and effects of their impairments, involve them in the design process and come up with design changes that exclude the least number of people from using the product properly. Before I get into the deeper discussion about the design changes needed to broaden the normality area, let’s have a quick review of those terms.

Stigmatization refers to this process of evaluating someone’s personality negatively. It comes from the term “stigma” which denotes a negative distinguishing mark on a person. We create an image of the personality attributes of a person when we meet that person for the first time. Our first impressions cause us to anticipate a virtual social identity of that person which we build using the preconceptions we have in our mind. Those who differ negatively from our preconception of normal personality are denoted not normal. As a result of stigmatization, derogatory attitude is displayed towards people with distinguishing features such as different impairments. As a result of this, a person with visible impairment end up being stared at, out of curiosity or pity. This is one of the strongest stigmatization factors that exist in the society.

Stigmatization brings out the term normality and what we consider to be normal in the society. This can only be defined in relative terms since one person can only be perceived to be normal compared to others. Normality is the property of the majority of the people on earth. Basically to be considered normal, you have to go with what the majority of the people do, think or act like. It’s highly enforced by the society and culture. For example, wearing glasses might be considered as being smart in one culture but being a nerd in another. Design of an artifact also plays a big role in normality. If majority of the people can use that artifact without any problems then the people who are excluded get labeled as not normal even though it can be an issue with the design of the product itself. We can include more people just by tweaking the old design and making it better at fulfilling the requirements of people with impairments, resulting in broadening the normality zone for the users of that product. We should keep in mind that normality can change with time and changing attitude. It’s our duty as designers to include the most number of people within the normality zone through our design.

Now if we go back to the physical, cognitive, perceptual or socially induced impairments that victimize some members of this society to be stigmatized, then in my opinion, visual impairments are some of the hardest to deal with. Even though it’s very hard for me to experience the world from the perspective of a visually impaired person since I never had to deal with such an impairment, but I can only imagine how hard it must be dealing with everyday chores. And just by writing the last sentence I ended up stigmatizing a visually impaired person since I honestly don’t know is it actually that hard or am I just thinking that way out of pity!

Out of all different types of visual impairments, blindness is essentially a condition of a total lack of visual perception. To determine who might need special assistance due to their visual impairments, the term legal blindness has been introduced. In some countries, legal blindness is defined as acuity (vision) of 6/60 or less in the better eye with best correction possible. This means a legally blind person will need to stand 10 times closer to an object to see it properly, compared to a person without any visual impairment. This makes a lot of everyday activities quite hard for a large number of people in the society. But some clever design changes of everyday items can dramatically improve the living conditions of people with visual impairments. I am not talking about redesigning everyday items from the ground up which will require a big budget, a long design process and a steeper learning curve. I believe by adding new components to existing items or by tweaking the design a bit, we can solve a lot of problems visually impaired people face everyday. Before thinking of a complete new product, we should look into the current design of existing products and try to find out what are the design factors that are excluding people with visual impairments from using that product. If we can fix those design problems then not only the blind people will be able to use it properly, but also people without any visual impairments will be able to enjoy a product that might be easier to use. It’s better if I give some examples to elaborate my point here.

Let’s start with one of the most common items that a blind person needs in everyday life, a white cane. A white cane helps that person navigate this world by providing tactile feedback. But this doesn’t help him or her to find the correct directions on a busy street, or to recognize other people while she is walking around. But these features can easily be implemented on the cane by embedding a camera and a GPS chip. In fact, researchers have already built a prototype to fulfill these requirements [1]. The design of this cane can be tweaked a little more to add haptic feedback through vibrations for easier navigation. For example, a long vibration for going straight or two short vibrations for taking a left turn and so on.

Another important everyday activity is cooking. Being a very bad cook I struggle all the time with measurements of ingredients as mentioned in the recipes. How much is 1 tablespoon and how much is 5 ounces! Only if the measuring cups and cooking pots had tactile feedback for measurements! A person with visual impairment could just use the raised dots on the cookware to measure different ingredients instead of relying on her estimates. Even us non-cooks would be able to keep our eyes on the cooking video on youtube instead of focusing back and forth between the video and measurements.

To prevent over spills, liquid sensors can be used in cups and pots to signal through beepers or speakers when the liquid reaches a required level.

To measure the temperature of stoves and ovens, Bluetooth thermometers can be used with smart phone’s voice over functions when a required temperature is reached. This not only would help the visually impaired but also would free anyone from the effort of constantly checking the temperature.

Smart labeling products like PenFriend [2] is another good example of a small invention that’s having a big effect on the everyday life of the visually impaired. This is an audio labeling system that consists of a digital pen and labels containing barcodes that the pen can read. These labels can be put on jars in the kitchen, boxes in the living room or even clothing in the closet for easy identifications of items using the pen.

Keeping track of time is another activity we have to deal with in our everyday lives. Usually we look at our phones or wristwatches to check the time. But what if we could feel the time through our touch? That would also help anyone with visual impairment to keep track of time. Interestingly enough, there’s already watches like this! For example, Tissot Silent-T watch combines the latest in tactile technology that provides time through silent vibrations. There are raised markers around the watch to indicate time of the day and touching the hour hand and the minute hand of the watch provides different type of vibrations to indicate the location. This way anyone can feel the current time by touching the watch. Funnily enough, their marketing campaign is targeting the busy executives who need to check the time without being rude during long meetings.

These are just some examples of clever re-design of everyday things that can solve a lot of problems a person with visual impairment might face living his or her everyday life. Most of these products will also come in handy for people without any type of visual impairments. And as soon as the new design becomes a part of the commonly used items by most of the people in the society, the stigmatization goes away and normality expands to make the previously “not-normal” the new “normal”.

References:

1. http://www.wired.com/2015/05/cane-blind-recognizes-faces-30-feet-away/
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePE0-U73Ajc
3. http://www.overstock.com/Jewelry-Watches/Tissot-T-Tactile-Silent-T-Mens-Steel-Watch/3626663/product.html

By – Biswajit Sarker

Assignment 3

I have chosen to discuss something closely related to a physical impairment, but is not clearly an impairment, that has become a disability by today’s society. Being very short today is something I believe yields both social stigmatization and is not very easy to be. I have chosen this topic because, I myself is not very tall, and I think there are a lot of everyday situations that could improve with a better design of things.

The first and obvious thing that comes to mind when thinking of minimizing stigmatisation for short persons is of course to make them appear taller with some kind of aid. At first glance this might seem like a genius idea, it would solve most of the problems short people have, i.e reaching things, finding clothes that fit, friends using you as an armrest etc. There are shoes designed for short people that has a thicker sole than normal ones, but looks exactly the same as normal ones. This somewhat helps the social stigma of being short as you appear taller, but excludes the really short ones as there is a limitations of how much height these kind of shoes will give you before it starts to look like you are wearing stilts and the stigmatization becomes an even bigger problem.

The special shoes mentioned above might be a solution for short persons, but what about the really short persons? How can design be used to minimize stigmatisation for them? To illustrate an idea think of building a store, let’s say an ICA, solely designed for short persons (i.e all the shelves and cash register is at a reachable height) this would of course help the stigmatization and exclusion that might occur at regular stores but is this a good idea? I do not think so myself, as this would lead to a certain group of people having to seek out a special store and the stigmatization would still occur. If you are convinced this is a good idea, picture the mentioned scenario and instead of a store for very short people, a store for a certain ethnicity or sexual orientation and then you would surely realise this is not a viable option.

This is what is tricky with stigmatization, solving one apparent problem that leads to stigmatization might possibly lead to another problem that results in stigmatization. That is true not only when thinking of very short persons, but for both physical impairments and cognitive ones. I really do not have a good idea of how design can be used to minimize stigmatization for very short people and even if I had, I am not even be sure it would be used today as most companies only care about making money.

The second part of this assignment is to discuss how design can be used to broaden the “normality” area. It is first important to discuss what is considered “normal”. Picture a group of 10 people, one being 1.30 m tall and the rest being roughly 1.80 m. In this case the shortest person is clearly not of what is considered “normal” height. If the situation is reversed, there is one person being 1.80 m tall and the remaining being 1.30 m tall the same person who in the first example was considered “normal” is now the “abnormal” one. The point is that being “normal” is not an absolute thing and can change depending on the perspective.

I think the term “normal” is a generalization made up by generic people. In this case you are considered “normal” if you have roughly the same height as everyone else, but if you are shorter or (very much taller) you are considered “abnormal”.

I already brushed on the topic of designing to broaden the normality area for short people when mentioning the shoes that make you appear taller and I think this is the general solution to make short people feel “normal”, make them as tall as everyone else. If you do not consider a general solution it is possible for example, to adjust your home to your height. I would appreciate if my kitchen shelves was not as high on the wall as they are now for example, but this is a solution just for me as a construction company would never consider deviating from the “normal” measurements when building apartments. I think this is one of the ultimate reasons it is hard to design for people with any kind of impairments, it is expensive and it is hard to make something that will aid you without looking different than anyone else.

 

Assignment 3: Minimizing Stigmatization with Design

Stigmatization and Normality

While the term of normal is still in much debate, I would generally say normality is about not being different to another. The more similar you look or behave with other people, the more “normal” you will be considered. Once you have something different, for example if your height is 250cm, then you are considered as not normal. You will also be considered as not normal when you are using a wheelchair, while most other people walk. However if you are very tall, it will not create a stigmatization. It only occurs when we associate our differences with something bad or unfortunate that would change the way other people react to us.

Stigmatization is very subjective in my opinion. Something can be very stigmatized in some community, but not in other communities. Stigmatization created by the majority, and suffered by the minority. For example if you have a tattoo, in some art community where most people have tattoo, then it is considered normal. However if you work in governmental companies where you need to look neat and clean all the time, people will think you are a bad person.

It is because people associate tattoo with a person with bad attitude and crime. Both of these community (art and governmental) aware of this association, but in the art community, people choose to don’t care about the issue and accept tattoo as a normal thing a person would have.

So, in short, if you feel stigmatized for example of having a tattoo, you just need to go to a community that accepts you and your tattoo, or the easiest way you could remove your tattoo. But, that is not the case when we talk about stigmatization for people having disability. One solution is to create supportive tools that could both help people with their disability and also minimize the stigmatization.

People think when they try to minimize stigmatization with design, they will make a product as close as a product that normal people would have, but improve it in some aspect for disabled person. Therefore, the effect of being different by using unusual things will be minimized too. But it is the only way?

Design to broaden the normality?

I would say that design to broaden the normality is an opposite approach to design to minimize stigmatization. By designing a product only to minimize stigmatization, we tend to explore what are the stigmas that disabled people get by using supportive tools in a society. By finding these stigmas, we create or improve supportive tools that hopefully minimize the stigmatization.

Let’s take the example of wheelchair. Some companies enable people in a wheelchair to raise their seat and have a same level to a normal standing people. With this position, there is no height difference between normal people and people on a wheelchair, therefore they can talk normally without any problem. This solution is one of a very good example of minimizing stigmatization with design. A thought that a person on a wheelchair will have a problem in communication will slowly disappear.

On the other hand, it still not minimizes the stigmatization of people in wheelchair in general. They might still feel hard to go the park because people will still stare at them.

Design to broaden the normality supports the differences and leads people to accept that there are differences between people. This approach puts non-disabled people as the user in the center. What we could do is to take a design of stigmatized products that were created for disabled people, and recreate the product so that the product can be used for non-disabled people.

For instance we could design a wheelchair as another transportation mode. We could make that affordable so non-disabled person interested to buy and use the wheelchair. We could also make that portable so it may helps reduce back pain when you need to walk a lot or standing a lot at work or school.

Slowly it will change the perspective that a wheelchair previously seen as a not-normal people would use becomes just another normal type of transportation. It broadens the definition of what normal is, and suddenly the past stigmatization of wheelchair will not exist anymore.

I wouldn’t say that one approach is better than another. What I would like to point out here is that we shouldn’t only focus with disabled people themselves when we try to minimize the stigmatization. It will take a lot more time to have not-disabled people accept a stigmatized product, but as a consequence it will create a more general de-stigmatization of a disability.

By: I Made Satrya Rudana