About

This project is situated at the intersection of Accessibility, Digital making, and Human-Computer Interaction. It is personally important to me as a neurodivergent digital maker with my own experiences of disability. The research aims to increase the accessibility of digital making to disabled creatives through free, open access design software, and to generate new knowledge in the field. 

Arts and crafts, including digital making, have a long-established positive impact on agency, well-being and community building (Rubin, 1990; Lazar et al., 2018). These benefits are dependent on accessible facilities and technical support (Hurley, 2020). While makerspaces, makers’ knowledge sharing platforms and making software are often presented as open and inclusive, this is not the experience of many underrepresented groups, such as the disabled and neurodivergent communities (Carstensten, 2014; Hurley, 2020; Mühür and Yurt, 2021). 

Key contributions include a better understanding of the experiences of disabled makers with fatigue- and concentration-based accessibility needs, a design and prototype for a  Computer-Aided Design software developed with an accessibility-first approach, as well as workshops and other forms of knowledge sharing addressed to disabled makers. The project utilises the methodological frameworks of Co-design, Autoethnography, Design Justice and Iterative Design, and is intended to contribute to the community and promote community-oriented design practices in creative technology. 

The proposal has been developed in partnership with Shape Arts, a disability-led organisation which works to improve access to culture for disabled people by providing opportunities for disabled creatives, training cultural institutions to be more open to disabled people, and through running participatory arts and development programmes. The research is supported by the combined arts, design, accessibility and computing expertise of UAL Creative Computing Institute and Shape Arts.