Through this group project I began to grasp the massively under-represented and unheard voices of those with a disability. We all see those with disabilities in our everyday life but I had previously failed to consider this group in the context of graphic design – which we discovered to be an extremely limiting space for the disabled.
This project has taught me the importance of designing not for an underrepresented group but with one – the weight of we vs. them. It was easy in the beginning of the project to do a quick google research about our tool we were exploring, find the challenges for those with a disability, and begin to work out a solution. But once we realized the need to design with the disabled and went out to speak with those people first hand about the work we were doing it opened up a whole new set of realizations, realities, new ideas, and imperfections with our previous work – in fact we had to scrap our whole initial idea. This really drove home the harm that can be done and the breadth of what can be accomplished designing as a collective.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Blauvelt A.(1994) ‘An Opening: Graphic Design’s Discursive Spaces, Visible Language, 28(3), pp. 205–217
This opening was informative to our group in the outset when considering graphic design tools to represent in our project. Our initial thoughts were around what is graphic design for those who cannot see? What would it mean to be an audible designer, a sensory designer, a culinary designer? We began to consider graphic designs historical (and limiting) definition and how we could adapt those traditional standards for a more inclusive world of design. There is also discussion of the inclusivity of “others” in the practice of graphic design though race and gender roles are all that is mentioned. It seems that when it comes to inclusivity and hearing a multitude of voices, the voice of the disabled is often overlooked and ignored as a minority group. This made us question where those with a disability fit into the world of graphic design today and how their voices can be amplified or given a vehicle for self amplification.
Brehm, D. (2023). Improving accessibility of online graphics for blind users. [online] MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Available at: https://news.mit.edu/2023/improving-accessibility-online-graphics-blind-users-jonathan-zong-1002.
This project around designing legible online graphics for those with a visual impairment lead us to consider the translation of visually forward items we use in day to day life. Specifically those that you do not often seen translated for the visually impaired. With this in mind we began to think about the concept of posters and print campaigns and the lack of these being designed for the blind. With something so graphically lead, similar to the infographics in this project, how do you express beyond audible words the emotions and feelings graphic posters are typically geared toward generating? We were also inspired by the open source nature of this project. This lead us to discuss further levels of accessibility such as financial. So many aids for the blind are incredibly costly or require access to particular resources – even just being able to read a tactile map – so we decided we wanted to design something non technological and publicly accessible for all.
Fight For Sight, Thurston, M. and Dunlop, C. (2024). Outside: Insights into loneliness and isolation for blind and vision impaired people. Fight for Sight.
The Fight for Sight study on loneliness and isolation informed our basis of creating a poster to amplify the unheard voices and perspectives of those with a visual impairment. The study provides a multitude of quotes which were both directly used in our poster and indirectly helped us understand better the lived experience in a way that was not exclusive to data points. The study also underlined the intersectionality that exists between the blind and vision impaired which is imperative to understanding visual impairment as a whole and the outputs we wanted to present. This drove us to ensure voices from all degrees of blindness were heard in our project. This study was also important to our research as it gave anonymous perspectives. We wanted to ensure we were pulling from ‘unheard’ groups and not solely those who advocate for those with a visual impairment publicly. This was to ensure a well rounded and unskewed study.
Heinze, N., Jones, L., Firuzé Bertiz, Saunders, E. and Renata (2024). How does the UK public think and feel about people with visual impairment: a review of existing evidence. Frontiers in psychology, 15.
This study on public perception of those with a visual impairment is what gave use directive to amplify the unseen stories of those with a visual impairment. While underscoring the impact of being blind through extensive data this study also included polling from the general public and the results were quite shocking to us though sadly in line with what we were seeing across other studies. There seems to be a distance at which non blind hold the blind and it felt like this could be directly linked to the various studies we found on loneliness, isolation, shame, negative mental health, etc. This study also highlighted previously unknown perspectives such as those with V.I feeling like a fraud, or being assumed as asexual because of their blindness. Mixed with the varying views of the public we wanted to attempt to bridge what seemed like an incredible wide gap and create a campaign to both uplift and amplify the voices of the blind while exposing the reality of living with a visual impairment to the able bodied public.
It’s Nice That (2018). Democratising art: how the art world is opening up to blind and partially sighted visitors. [online] It’s Nice That. Available at: https://www.itsnicethat.com/features/brenda-sjahrial-blindness-art-270718.
This article on the ways in which the art world is adapting to be accessible to the blind fueled our initial desire to design for those with a visual impairment. But not just in a technical way – this opened our eyes to the adaptive ways in which braille and traditional tactile surfaces can be transformed to emit emotions and feelings through texture and form. While we steered away from designing something nontraditional such as this for a bit, we ended up circling back to the idea around designing accessible information systems for fun or for impact opposed for generic everyday use. With this in mind we came to the idea of the poster that also includes a form of a tactile map. Overall this really made us question how else you can understand and enjoy everyday design elements without sight. Can you smell a typeface? Can you hear a particular font (the bolder the louder)? Is an expressive typeface sweet to the taste? This lead us to think about the emotions of traditional design elements beyond what is visible.
Jencks C., Silver N. ([1972] 2013) Adhocism: The Case for Improvisation, Cambridge: The MIT Press, Excerpt pp. 38–53
The concept of mechanical evolution was highly informative to our process and lead much of our thought process for designing for the blind. There is the concept we see in the book surrounding the bicycle and its evolution in which you see it eventually come back to its original form as the most developed version. This notion of complexity not being necessary was a common theme and hurdle of our project. It is easy to associate complexity with rigour, drive, and adeptness but particularly in this project we found that the more complicated we tried to make the outcome the less legible it became and the less accessible. This helped us to remind ourselves to keep things simple and stick to the initial roots of an idea where the key elements often lie. Regardless, we still seemed to become victims of overcomplexity and had a difficult time with the decision of whether to design for the blind, the seeing, or both groups. The latter was our end audience group when perhaps it should have been for the first.
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