Edward Kennedy (1932–2009)

This is not a political blog. This is a blog about how the design of things intersects with our social structures to enhance or obstruct the participation of people with disabilities in society.

I suppose the fact that I think that social structures are things that can themselves be designed and engineered is a political bias that cannot be separated from my blogging, but this place isn’t meant to be about politics ostensibly.

With that, let me talk about the late Senator Edward Kennedy.

Here is a partial list of legislation that Sen Kennedy fought for (from the blog of Robert Rummel-Hudson):

The Message

What is the message here?

Handicap entrance in rear.

Walking assist

I’m way behind on my posting.

Remember all those walking robots that the Japanese have been so obsessed with all these years? Journalists took pictures and many people just rolled their eyes condescendingly. “Oh, you can make it dance? Cool, I guess.”

Once you’ve gotten the biomechanics of walking figured out, you can build something like this:

Honda walking apparatus

Honda walking apparatus

While Honda built these to reduce employee injuries at their car factories, this tech may be usable in the future by people with  muscle weakness such as those with spinal injuries or MS.

Link to Honda’s publicity blurb on the device.

Here is an older prototype that was demonstrated earlier this year at the International Trade Fair on Barrier Free Equipments & Rehabilitation for the Elderly & the Disabled.

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Random musing. How do cultural factors affect acceptance of assistive technologies and people with disabilities in general?

The Japanese as a society love gadgets more Americans (you should see the phones they’ve got there compared to here), but Americans are generally more accepting of people with disability on an everyday basis than the Japanese.

(edited to add) Wait, there’s more!

Voting 2

The majority of Americans with disabilities are not registered to vote. I was trying to find some statistics to post here, but there is not a lot of research on the topic, either.

When I was in New Hampshire, the entrance to the polling place I voted at had stairs and no ramp into the building. The exit, however, had a concrete ramp. So in order for a person who could not climb stairs to vote (and I did witness this with one senior citizen who used a walker) that person would have to go in the out door, which left him or her on the wrong side of all the registration tables. The traffic flow was only suitable for one-way traffic.

A better-designed layout would have had a traffic flow that had people going in the ramp door and out down the stairs. This still means that a person not using the stairs would have to go against the flow of traffic to leave.

The reason this is preferable is to accommodate people who might have cognitive or communication impairments in addition to a physical disability. The flow of the room should make it easy to determine what to do without having to ask. If nothing else, one could imitate the person ahead of you in line, something I do as a nondisabled person put in a new or unfamiliar situation all the time.

In the place I voted in PA, there was only one door so everyone had to go against the flow of traffic to leave. It wouldn’t have been any more awkward for someone in a wheelchair, scooter or with a walker than for anyone else. (If I were running that polling place, I would have still turned the check-in tables ninety degrees do direct flow better, but it was functional the way it was).
Some technology after the jump.

What is this blog anyway?

I keep attaching the word “design” to things, but so far, there hasn’t been a whole lot of blogging here focused on it. What is this blog about, anyway? Here, have a seat and I’ll explain where I’m coming from. (This entry is an example of metacommunication.)

Pull up a Danish postmodern chair

First of all, I am exhilerated by the amount of technology that is avalable today that can allow people to participate in society who might never have been able to do so in years past. Stephen Hawking was Time Magazine’s Man of the Millennium with good reason. Nothing about the man or his work would have been familiar to someone centuries ago.

This isn’t to suggest that all our problems are solved. While we have the technology, application and design for its use still sucks.