Assignment 3

”Normal”
Normal is an interesting word. In a sense, normal is considered to mean something repetitive, something recurrent. At the same time, normal is also a majority, a minimization of exceptions, something expected. Both the behavior and looks of a person can be normal. Opinions, beliefs, thoughts, actions… The list goes on. Normal is somehow considered to be good, be- cause normal can also be comforting in a sense. For many of us, normal is preferable – regardless of what we’re talking about.

But at the same time, normal has an opposite – abnormal. Something or someone can also be abnormal. Behavior, looks, opinions, beliefs, thoughts – and action all of them can be abnormal too.

But is abnormal automatically bad? Is abnormal something we should avoid, dislike or disregard, simply because it is the opposite of normal – something that we often consider ”good”?

If a person has ”normal” thoughts but looks different, is that person con- sidered to be normal or abnormal? Besides, who delivers the judgement or blessing of someone or something being labeled as abnormal or normal?

Stigmatization
In this assignment, I’ve decided to look closer to the stigmatization caused by hearing impairment. Hearing impairment, much like other impairment, has many different levels . Some can still hear and speak properly, some have a little trouble hearing and pronouncing things right and some can’t even have one single word heard or said. The main reason to why I will further examine stigmatization on hearing impairment is because I find it interesting to observe how not being able to speak and hear often is equated to being unintelligent. It doesn’t really matter if the person i question has trouble with the language or if he or she has any kind of impairment – not being able to communicate properly through speech will often lead to people perceiving you as – more or less – unintelligent.

Interestingly, hearing impairment (or even language troubles) doesn’t neces- sarily have anything to do with the cognitive ability. Placing an intelligent person in a country where he or she doesn’t know the language doesn’t make the person less intelligent, neither is a person with earplugs less in intelligent simply because he or she then would have more trouble while communicating. But why are we so quick to draw such a conclusion? Is a person unintelligent because I have to repeat myself or because he or she talks in a strange way?

Two (rather insulting) terms that come to mind when I’m thinking about the stigmatization of hearing impairment are ”deaf and dumb” and ”deaf-mute”.
The using of ”deaf and dumb” mainly started way back in the medieval English era where it was negative label pinned on the hearing impaired. It originates from Aristotle, the famous Greek philosopher, who said that ”deaf people were incapable of being taught, of learning and of reasoned thinking”. ”Deaf-mute” is also a term used to insult, originating form the 18-19th cen- tury, used to describe hearing impairment as silent without a voice (worthy of hearing), not too different from what Aristotle was expressing.

Clearly, hearing impairment’s stigmatization is far from a recent phenom- ena. To be honest, I don’t think that it somehow will fade out of existence either. But is it possible to use design and technology to minimize it, at least to begin with? Is it possible to broaden what we consider normal with the tools we have available now?

Design
There is no doubt that many of today’s tools are designed to simplify living with any kind of impairment. More and more communication is done by messaging through phones or social media, and that may have minimized the trouble of not being able to speak or hear.

There are also great supporting tools available today to support hearing impairment. The best and most used example of today’s technology is the classical hearing aid. It supports the user by amplifying the sound from outside simply to make it louder and, in some cases, also helps to filter sounds based on e.g. if it is background noise or speech. Most of today’s hearing aids are designed with minimalism in focus and don’t look much different from the regular earphones. Because of its great support and the fact that it is minimal in shape and size, the hearing aid stands out as a great example of how you can use design to minimize the stigmatization of hearing impairment. With it, the wearer would have less trouble in hearing or carrying a conversation and at the same time face less stigmatization as the aid visibility is low as well.

What if today’s hearing aid would resemble its origin, the ear trumpet, instead? Would that really impact the stigmatization?

Unfortunately, I honestly don’t think so. The ear trumpet is a lot bigger and clumsier tool to have or carry around. While it would help in the sense that it would support the user by amplifying the sound, but it would at the same time most likely be the source of stigmatization for other reasons too. A better example would be a wheelchair. It certainly helps as it can heavily support paralysis, muscular diseases or other physical impairments – but due to it’s size, limited usability and added clumsiness it might be- come another source of stigmatization itself by simply transferring the issue.

With the technology we have today, we both have and will certainly con- tinue to broaden the normality area though by – more or less – removing the reason for the stigmatization to begin with as much as we can. Some areas (e.g. physical impairments, cognitive impairments) are a bit tougher than others (e.g. hearing impairment, visual impairments), but far from impos- sible. It is just a matter of finding the balance between usability, support and minimal added negative impacts – providing a tool that is easy to use, helps and doesn’t negatively effect other part of the user’s life.

Assignment 2, Blind Movie

The movie Blind does a good job of showing many of the difficulties that being blind might cause while also focusing on how all other senses are affected and changed as a result of this. There were many parts of the movie that I directly could relate to things that we have talked about in this course and/or from prior knowledge.

I do feel that most of the scenes focusing on Mins lost sight were quite accurate in showing how it might be during your first couple of years being blind, the mistakes in the kitchen, bathroom and crossing of roads etc. felt difficult and I was able to “feel” how frustrating this might feel when someone suddenly becomes blind. As the movie progresses it becomes apparent that, aside from the disability, different parts of Mins body and mind has started to react and adapt to her visual impairment. This is where I feel that the movie becomes slightly inaccurate which is OK since it adds to the drama and general story. One thing i reacted to directly was that she seemed to have a supernatural perception of the room and the people in it through her hearing and smelling already after one year as blind. I might be wrong here but this effect of supernatural hearing and smelling does not come that quickly, it depends on factors like how young you were when the accident occurred or if you were born blind the effect should be even greater. In this case Min was quite young when the accident occurred but already after one year she can tell how tall people are, how they look and figure out the smallest details in the surrounding sound. This to me feels quite unrealistic and I do think that the time to get confident enough to trust your other, now more important, senses takes far longer time. Another thing connected to this (potential) miss is the fact that this “super-power” was quite irregular. In some parts of the movie it seemed as if Min heard everything but then at some crucial situations she cannot hear anything. Two examples would be that in one scene she opens the car window although it is raining and seems very shocked when she notices this, in another scene the suspect is clearly very close to min in a dark room, sitting really close to her. In all scenes before she were able to hear even when people breathed in quite loud environments, but now she can’t even hear, or smell that a man is in this empty house? She also mentioned in the car that he or the car had distinct medical smells.

The above mentioned inconsistency seems to be a regular problem in the movie, there are many cases where Min behaves in a way that opposes a previous behavior. She seems extremely confident when walking in known areas, maybe to confident and in other areas she seems entirely lost and unaware of people, object or persons in her vicinity. The most obvious example is when she is running and, although she gets updated through voice instructions, she knows exactly when she has reached the elevator and such. Minor things such as the incredible timing of the brick when hitting the suspect (in the end) is also things that I would question had this not been a movie made to entertain.

I did not really get surprised of any of her thoughts/abilities but I could feel her fear of being blind many times and that was something that I really thought was interesting. For example when she waited for taxis for hours and hours just because she was unsure when they came or if people were before her in line. I liked the graphics that showed how she might have used sound and smell to build a black/white image of her surroundings in her head, that gave an idea and how a blind person might perceive of the world around.