“Innovative Approaches To Disability ”

Innovation means making changes in something established, especially by introducing new methods, ideas or products.

There are at least seven notable areas of innovations that are linked to people with disabilities.

First, there is the development of tools – such as wheelchairs and hearing aids – which allow people with disabilities to adapt to the environment in which they live. Second, there are adaptations of the environment that make it easier for people with disabilities to navigate their environment including, for example, ramps and universal design of physical environments.

?A third area is the development of tools – such as ultrasound, prenatal testing and preimplantation – ?that ?are used to diagnose the part of a person’s biological reality seen by some people as deficient, defective or impaired.

A fourth and related area relevant to persons with disabilities is the development of tools that would enable so-called ‘preventative measures’ (avoiding the embryo with the ‘undesired’ characteristic or terminating a pregnancy if the fetus has an ‘undesired’ characteristic) as well as efforts to ‘correct’ or ‘repair’ perceived defects through in utero surgery, gene therapy or interventions on the neonatal level.

A fifth ?area of ?relevant innovations is the development of bodily assistive devices that enable people with disabilities to have abilities that may outperform the ‘normal’ body, such as brain machine interfaces and sub-vocal speech devices.

Other areas of innovation we should not overlook are in the social and theoretical spheres. A sixth area of innovations encompasses the societal structure and relational dynamics. These, in turn, define the extent to which disabled people are provided the opportunity to participate in social, cultural, and political spheres of everyday life.

This area includes how groups that serve people with disabilities constantly have to reinvent themselves to survive changing political and social dynamics such as how to provide high quality service with less staff; and how to generate revenue in an efficient way to make up shortfalls of government funding. It also includes advocacy groups of people with disabilities who have to struggle to find resources to advocate for the changes needed to ensure that people with disabilities can partake equitably in all aspects of society.

And, finally, a seventh area of note includes innovation in theories, modes of inquiry, and analysis of the world. One example is the theory and concept of ableism , which allows us to understand the world around us in totally new ways. In the 1960s-1970s, the disabled people community and the nascent academic field of disability studies developed the theory of ableism to interpret the attitudes, experiences and social realities encountered by disabled people.

The concept of ableism is still very fresh and it self-consciously enables us to interpret the world through the lens of the ability preferences we exhibit. ?It is applicable to nearly every social discourse (e.g. ?energy , health , body enhancement beyond the ‘normal’ , education ). ?Indeed I have argued in a previous blog that I see ableism as a theoretical lens through which we analyze disablements (as in social discrimination) as a gift of the disability community to the rest of the academy and, indeed, to human kind.

Despite their relevance to people with disabilities, innovative products rarely are developed with universal design in mind. Cutting edge products meant for the masses constantly must be modified after the fact to make them accessible to people with different non-normative abilities. Although there are some interesting accessibility initiatives such as the Center for Cognitive Ubiquitous Computing (CUbiC) ?at Arizona State University, or Microsoft , or Apple , the reality is that many products never become accessible and others constantly play catch-up. Websites, for example, are still fairly limited for the blind , while video is often useless for the deaf due to the absence of subtitles or close captioning (there are some good efforts ).

Various lists of innovative products exist on the Internet. ?However, very few innovation products developed for people with disabilities (for example, Braille), make these lists.? What makes the general innovation hit-lists are medical products. Yet, there are so many more innovative products related to people with disabilities. The website Trendhunter.com has a list of innovations, including 53 for the ?blind , 21 for the deaf , and 16 by and for the disabled . And then there is Amazing Innovation: Mobile Apps for the Disabled .

The tenuous economic situation of organizations that serve people with disabilities is such that they must face constant innovation or risk extinction. In such cases, innovations are often reactive, and driven by negative social developments such as cut in funding.? Changing funding support structures and societal expectations have forced disability service and advocacy organizations to rethink how they operate. (For example, there is the resource “Innovative Service Models and Practices in the Disability Sector of Western Australia and the innovation: pilot projects such as the wounded warrior project of the National Organization on Disability, and the Creating Change - Innovations in the World of Disability by the Ashoka organization).

One area where disabled people tend to be the main focus is therapeutic products such as bodily assistive devices. Therapeutic interventions (developed to regain expected body functioning through iterative advancements) increasingly allows the wearer to outperform the species-typical body.

The so called non-therapeutic use of therapeutic devices increasingly is discussed from various angles such as ethics, health, and utility. ?Questions raised by disability studies draw attention to the extent to which disabled people actually shape these product s, and whether they will be the main focus in the future. Many of these devices are starting to be used for non therapeutic purposes such as Emotive sells, a brain machine interface for gaming purposes. Indeed, we may question how much longer the impact of bodily assistive devices will be confined to disabled people, given the desire of so called non-disabled people to use them.

What this all tells us is that there is an often overlooked connection between diversity, creativity and innovation. ?What we call innovation happens in many spheres and on many levels, and despite a general invisibility, many of the innovative products, processes, ideas and theories are relevant to, and used by, people with disabilities.