Author Archives: Liz Jackson

Liz Jackson is a founding member of The Disabled List, an advocacy collective that engages with disability as a critical design practice. The Disabled List examines how day-to-day practices of disability are both designerly and exploited by professional design culture.
graphic representation of various disability dongles. Top Left stair climbing wheelchair. Top right "social emotion recognition" AR goggles. Bottom Left Sign language gloves. Bottom Right haptic shoes interfering with blind person's navigation.

Disability Dongle

I created the term “Disability Dongle” in 2019 to draw attention to the phenomenon of design and engineering students and practitioners who prototype “innovative” disability solutions. The definition satirizes an outcome in which designs or technologies “for” disabled people garner mainstream attention and accolades despite valid concerns disabled people have about them.  (read more...)