#inclusion
Photo credit: Caydie McCumber
By Shardell Joseph
An associate professor at MIT University, USA, has written a new book named Design Justice examining the way in which technology can be functional for more people within the society. The new book focuses on the correlation between technology, design, and social justice.
In the book, Design Justice: Community Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need, Sasha Constanza-Chock shared their experience as a transgender and nonbinary person, and explained how technology could help improve the experiences of others that belong to minority groups.
Highlighting the biases built into everyday objects, including software interfaces, medical devices, social media, and the built environment, Constanza-Chock examined how these biases reflect existing power structures in society. published by the MIT Press, the book offers a framework for fixing the shortcomings of technology in society, while suggesting methods of technology design that can be used to help build a more inclusive future.
‘Design justice is both a community of practice, and a framework for analysis,’ said Costanza-Chock, who is the Mitsui Career Development Associate Professor in MIT’s Comparative Media Studies/Writing program. ‘In the book I’m trying to both narrate the emergence of this community, based on my own participation in it, and rethink some of the core concepts from design theory through this lens.’
In one particular example, Constanza-Chock talked about how something as simple as going through airport security can become an unusually uncomfortable process. Airport’s tend to be set up with security millimetre wave scanners which are set up with binary, male or female configurations. To operate the machine, agents press a button based on their assumptions about the person entering the scanner – blue for ‘boy,’ or pink for ‘girl’. As a non-binary person, Constanza-Chock would always be flagged by the machine when travelling, prompted for a hands-on check by security officials.
‘I know I’m almost certainly about to experience an embarrassing, uncomfortable, and perhaps humiliating search… after my body is flagged as anomalous by the millimetre wave scanner,’ Constanza-Chock wrote in the book.
This is an experience familiar to many who fall outside the system’s norms, Costanza-Chock explains – trans and gender nonconforming people’s bodies, black women’s hair, head wraps, and assistive devices are regularly flagged as ‘risky’.
The book also looks at the issue of who designs technology, a subject Costanza-Chock has examined extensively — for instance in the 2018 report ‘#MoreThanCode,’ which pointed out the need for more systematic inclusion and equity efforts in the emerging field of public interest technology.
Costanza-Chock, hopes the book will interest people not only for the criticism it offers, but as a way of moving forward and deploying better practices.
‘My book is not primarily or only critique,’ Costanza-Chock said. ‘One of the things about the Design Justice Network is that we try to spend more time building than tearing down. I think design justice is about articulating a critique, while constantly trying to point toward ways of doing things better.’
One of my favorite commissioned projects I got to work on this year. HP asked me to create coloring pages that centered around diversity and inclusion. They gave me 100% creative freedom to do what I wanted and paid me well to do it. Download the free pages here.
It is so important to see color because every color has power and meaning. From a young age we assign certain behavior to particular colors without realizing that it is harmful and something we must unlearn. For this reason, I will always put black women and girls at the center of my work. I understand that dark skin is far too often devalued, misrepresented, and overlooked.
Shout out to black women and men, Indigenous, Latinos, Lgbtq community and other minority groups who basically saved this country from itself with this election. Also, can some of you guys move here to Ohio…I promise Columbus is a decent place, we need to turn Ohio blue .
Thuglit, White dudes and Hella Gay Crime Fiction
Today is brought to you by the homie Todd Robinson on a podcast. Listen to that here.
So Todd was the editor of Thuglit. I read it a lot. I linked to the issue I was in cause I am V. Proud of that story. But I don’t want to talk craft right now.
Instead I want to talk about being welcomed with big open arms into a genre where, I did not see my ideas reflected and decided to actually dive in.…
This blog has signed and supports the Xenia Declaration
Geovana Luiza is a stunning 21 year old model, blogger and vlogger from Brasilia, the capital of Brazil.
Geovana was born with spina bifida myelomeningocele. This is a congenital condition in which there grows a malformation in the spine during pregnancy causing damage to the spinal cord. In Geovana’s case, her spinal cord was completely severed and she was diagnosed with a complete spinal cord injury. Because of this, she has been paralysed from her waist down for all her life and never had any feeling in her lower limbs. She also has a serious degree of both scoliosis and kyphosis(an unnatural sideways and front-to-back curvature of the spine).
Besides this, she also has a condition called hydrocephalus, meaning that there was an abnormal buildup of fluid in her brain. This could luckily be solved by the placing of a tube that drains the excess amount of liquid(also known as a shunt).
Because of the excellent treatment she received in the hospital, Geovana grew up in perfect health. Nonetheless, she often noticed she was looked at in a different way because of her wheelchair. For example, people often think she needs help with practically anything and there have even been cases where she was approached as if she was mentally disabled because of her wheelchair!
These prejudices couldn’t be further from the truth though. Of course, changing a lightbulb would be very difficult for her, but outside these kind of things, she lives completely independent from others and does everything by herself.
To get rid of these kinds of prejudices and to educate people about the life of people with disabilities, Geovana started a YouTube channel where she talks about her life as a wheelchair user. If you’re interested, just check out the link down here ⬇️
Also, feel free to follow Geovana on Instagram or to visit her Facebook page by clicking the link down below ⬇️
Community needs to be inclusive. All children need a family, not only those who have a biological family. The differently-abled can always contribute, and deserve group support. Single adults deserve to be included, not just when they are partnered. Atypical sexuality is just part of human variation, no need to ghettoize it. Planting gardens, painting old houses, holding a community feed are activities where everyone is needed, and everyone can contribute. When we see the full range of our human variety we know ourselves better, and can love ourselves, and each other, more. #rowegreentree