Designing for Who?
VAGUE Resident Daisy reports live from the V&A’s Design and Disability exhibition exploring design history through the lens of Disabled, Deaf, and neurodivergent creatives. Part One: a little patience.
Approaching the V&A on a crisp, windy morning, I was excited to step into a topic that has long been a daily conversation point in my personal life; one that London’s largest museums have been reluctant to address. Design & Disability, running this autumn at the V&A museum, is one of the first times I’ve seen the word ‘Disability’ emblazoned unapologetically across tube posters and signage. All too often it’s considered a dirty word: people aren’t quite sure if it’s offensive; “what’s the correct word to use, differently abled?” But here it is, commanding attention and taking up space.
Disability has been eloquently, and lovingly included in grassroots exhibition, education and gallery spaces for a long time; take the Museum of Transology, or Common Press’s zines on disability activism as recent examples. As a Londoner (and fashion lover), the V&A has been a favourite haunt for my entire adult life, and now I feel like it’s embracing me back.
The exhibition runs in a gallery just off the lofty main entrance of the museum. Cocooned in pink walls, you beep your ticket and you step in. Immediately, the presence of the disabled members of the curatorial team is felt — and immediately afterwards, so is their glaring absence from almost all other exhibitions. Answer me this: shouldn’t accessibility for all visitors be a cornerstone of good curation?
“Immediately, the presence of the disabled members of the curatorial team is felt — and immediately afterwards, so is their glaring absence from almost all other exhibitions.”
Following a detailed entrance of visual maps, tactile maps, large print information and a braille description, the exhibition begins: spaciously laid out with tactile points categorising each section, large print exhibition guides by every doorway, carpeted framing marking each stand on the floor, and a beautiful abundance of seating.
Clutching my large print binder, I was free to float from exhibit to exhibit, toes tapping the edges of the carpets long before any accidental bumps, and cushions awaiting my weight at each video piece or rest point. I felt really proud of the team who put the space together; even the accessibility devices that weren’t ones I needed made tears well up to my eyes because of all the people who’d feel comfortable visiting my favourite museum, thanks to a little carpet. Whether any of this team will be kept on for future exhibits or if they’re solely part of this exhibit, to be put back into storage when the word disability comes off the side of the building, is something we’ll have to wait to see (I’ve placed my bets).
The friend by my side sat with me and we fell into a conversation about the isolation of living with a disability. The lack of patience that people have to even spend five minutes adding alt text to a post, waiting for you to disembark the bus, or understanding when you need to rest. The frustration that comes with having to rely on other people, and feeling like you need to apologise for soliciting their patience and support. The way that people — designers, teachers, even friends and family — like to kind-heartedly think they know what is best for you, and will build intelligent products or develop complex treatments to ‘help’ you live a ‘normal’ life that actually hugely over complicate things, when really all you need is a simple level of support, time, and a little patience.
This exploration of design and disability was a beautiful echo of what the world could look like for disabled people if we were given the same space to exist that everyone else is. And with our admittedly tearful conversation over, we moved on through the exhibition.
Let me talk you through the first exhibit, here to our left: a great example of why marketing matters. In 2021, Nike released the Go FlyEase, an adaptive trainer which hinges on and off the foot with a click, meaning it can effectively be put on without hands, from standing or sitting. Amazing! Accessible footwear by Nike! Well, Nike failed to use the word disabled anywhere in any of their advertising, they used the ‘neutral’ term ‘hands-free’ (I didn’t know ‘disabled’ wasn’t neutral), and didn’t show any disabled people in their marketing campaign, quite literally erasing disabled people from the narrative of a product that had been made for them.
Across the way, we see a disabled influencer take to social media recently about a recent shopping experience with a brand that featured a disabled model wearing one prosthetic running blade and one trainer. Seeing herself represented in the campaign, she enquired about the shoe and was baffled that she could only buy a pair of them, not the single shoe she needed.
One step to the side, we see SWANY luggage, a Japanese brand of innovative accessible luggage founded by Etsuo Miyoshi who led with his own identity as a disabled person in the marketing of his products, highlighting their uses and skyrocketing his own sales. Instead of quietly profiting from the purple pound (disabled shoppers) a la Nike, he platformed his target consumer, and took a big step in the destigmatisation of disability in Japan.
“... quite literally erasing disabled people from the narrative of a product that had been made for them.”
Moving further along, we happen upon a wall of textile art: protest banners from the many movements disabled people have fronted with no credit. Raised below the banners sit Vogue magazines featuring disabled cover stars looking glamorous, alongside a video from one of Dublin-born fashion designer Sinead O’Dwyer’s accessible and inclusive runway shows, featuring clothes that prove without a doubt that adaptive designs do not compromise style — or at least they don’t have to when the designers give a shit.
The next wall shows encased household objects, technically complicated typing technology that went on to be sold to Apple, alongside hand-modified cutlery made by a disabled older woman to manage her meals. Pinnacles of technology next to purses with cable ties attached to the zippers to make them easier to unzip. Small plastic contraptions 3D-printed in a library to enable their owners to do to things like opening cupboard with small knobs, or hold a deck of cards sit unassuming behind the glass.
I remember vividly an instructor on a DE&I course that I was a part of explaining how really the thing that disables people is the way that the world is built around them: stairs, fiddly objects, narrow walkways… our built spaces and products create barriers in the way they are designed, in their view effectively creating disabilities. I thought that was interesting.
Following this powerful exhibition, which I would recommend to everyone who can make it there, I decided to reach out to someone else who knows a thing or two about design — and the power of good design — to dig a little deeper. Stay tuned for part two.
credits
words — daisy riley
design — karina so.