Art and Design Commons^™

The Meaning Of A Choice, Julie-Louise Zeitoun

Masters Theses

If you are disabled or disadvantaged, you will be dismissed and stifled. Few people will actively care for your struggles. As a person with autism, I was deeply fearful of the persecution I had faced throughout my life; it was a fear that followed me with terrifying determination. I desperately wanted to blend into society. So I designed myself to be devoid of any weakness, and productivity was the way I chose to conceal any difficulties I faced. It was a way to measure my success — a way to measure my normalcy.

Standard medical textiles are generic, cumbersome devices. …

Blueprints, Lauryn E. Welch

Theses and Dissertations

“Blueprints” is an open letter on chronic illness and its shaping of the artist’s partnership and painting practice. Through the framework of a house—foyer, kitchen, library, bedroom, garden—put in relation to the body, this paper examines the vibrant matter inside, as an alliance of parts including people, objects, and spaces.

Read Like A Dyslexic Sort Of..., Margaret Prost

Honors Thesis

READ is an interactive art exhibition created by artist and designer, Margaret Prost. Prompted by the neon sign, the audience is encouraged to pick up READ Like a Dyslexic Sort of… and enjoy the lighthearted presentation of a beginner’s guide to dyslexia. With its simple yet selective choice of words, READ Like a Dyslexic Sort of… is reminiscent of a children’s book — something you would have read when first learning the “dos and don’ts” of society. It is a manual for understanding dyslexia and is meant to evoke a sense of curious kinship with dyslexic people rather than an …

Hailey's Hearing Aids, Hailey Marie Garcia

Whittier Scholars Program

Individuals from the deaf and hard-of-hearing community are likely to experience more anxiety and depression due to defective cognitive, social, communicational, and emotional skills (Azizi et al., 2019). The word “disability” is embedded with historical negative connotations with phrases such as “deaf and dumb” because if they were deaf or mute then they were automatically labeled as inferior (Horovitz, 2007). Since the 18th century, the DHH community has been seen as incapable, even inhuman, hence the development of emotional deficiencies that bleed into one’s perception of society and their self esteem (Gallaudet, 1886).

How do you navigate a hearing world …

An “Other” Experience Of Videogames: Analyzing The Connections Between Videogames And The Lived Experience Of Chronic Pain, Gracie Straznickas

College of Computing and Digital Media Dissertations

In this dissertation I argue for the connections between the lived experience of chronic pain and videogames, exploring what interacts with and influences them. To answer this, I draw on cripistemology as I engage in autoethnography, close-reading and close-gameplay, restorying, mixed methods design, formal interviews, surveys, and inductive coding. I further argue for pushing back against the unhelpful binaries that define the “human” and a false idea of “universal” experience or ability, instead pointing to the intersectionality that better reflects the biopolitics of disability, including both debility and capacity. I engage with these methods in three specific projects that consider …

Mutual Rescue: Disabled Animals And Their Caretakers, Lynda Birke, Lori Gruen

Animal Studies Journal

In this paper, we explore how caretakers experience living with disabled companion animals. Drawing on interviews, as well as narratives on websites and other support groups, we examine ways in which caretakers describe the lives of animals they live with, and their various disabilties. The animals were mostly dogs, plus a few cats, with a range of physical disabilities; almost all had been rehomed, often from places specializing in homing disabled animals.

Three themes emerged from analysis of these texts: first, respondents drew heavily on the common narrative of disabled individuals as heroes, often noted in disability rights literature – …

The Drive For Disability, Aliyah Walker

Capstones

After recent inclusivity movements, the fashion industry had a reckoning that they need to do better when it comes to diversity. Size, age, and gender have started to have better representation in recent years; however, disability representation is still lagging. If the fashion industry wants to become truly inclusive, it needs to start representing disabled individuals positively and regularly both on the runway and in campaigns.

Link to Capstone Project: https://medium.com/@aliyah.walker83/the-drive-for-diversity-b29288adc482

Raising Canes: Crafting Disability Narratives, Charlotta Abernathy

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Disability is a common part of life, but not a well understood part of our cultural conscience. Because of this, the oppression that disabled people face, ableism, is particularly pervasive and under addressed. In order to begin to chip away at the systemic ableism that is embedded in all parts of society, disabled people need better representation in the media. This means not just showing stories that involve disabled people or that are about disabled people, but actual stories by disabled people about disability. One area of particular interest to me is addressing ableist misconceptions about assistive technology. To take …

“We Already Look Amazing, We Just Need Designers To Jump On Board”: Designing For Female Consumers That Use Mobility Aids Based On Satisfaction With Retail Selection And Garment Design Characteristics, Mackenzie L. Miller

Honors College Theses

One in 4 people (85 million) in the United States has been diagnosed with a form of a disability, with 13.7 percent (44 million) having a mobility-related disability (CDC, 2020). Despite being the largest disability minority group in the US (CDC, 2020), the availability of clothes for pets is larger than the selection for people with disabilities (Ryan, 2018). The purpose of this qualitative study is to evaluate satisfaction of ready-to-wear and adaptive clothing among female consumers who use mobility aids. Fit issues, lack of availability, and lack of consideration for disability needs were found as overarching problems in both …

Lost In Translation, Amanda Barr

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Lost in Translation addresses the issues that trauma can create in communication; whether that be a physical trauma that damages ability to speak, think, or understand language, or mental and emotional trauma that significantly effects abilities to process, connect, and manage interpersonal relationships. My work is my voice, and a way to help others connect, to feel heard, and to even help them begin to communicate.

Modeling Disability: Softly Making The Invisible Visible, Libby Evan

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

“I am not asking for pity. I am telling you about my disability.” -Eli Clare

In the following Bachelor of Fine Arts thesis statement, you will not find someone overcoming their disability. You will not find a tale of inspiration. You will not find a cure for ableism. You simply will find an individual's experience of disability— my experience of disability.

My invisible disability puts the medical model and social model of disability in constant tension as I navigate everyday life living with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and severe arthritis. Both models seek to find blame for disability, whether in searching …

Can You See It?: Providing Visual Arts Access To Audiences With Visual Impairment And Blindness, Rowan A. Puig Davis

Senior Projects Spring 2020

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

Sky Cubacub Interview, Spencer Nieto

Asian American Art Oral History Project

Artist Bio: Rebirth Garments are designed and made by hand by Sky Cubacub. Sky is a non-binary queer and disabled Filipinx human from Chicago, IL with life long anxiety and panic disorders. Sky first dreamed of this collection while in high school and couldn’t find a place where they could buy a chest binder as a person who was under 18, and who didn't have access to a credit card to buy one online. Sky is especially interested in Rebirth Garments being accessible to queer and disabled youth and is working on creating a program for making free/reduced priced garments …

Destierro And Desengaño: The Disabled Body In Golden Age Spanish Portraiture, Colin C. Sanborn

Honors Papers

This paper analyzes the role of the disabled body in Golden Age Spanish court portraiture, focusing in particular on Diego Velázquez's work for Philip IV. Although this body of work has been examined extensively, few scholars have investigated what it implies about 17th-century Spaniards' conception of human divergence, and fewer still have done so without falling back on outdated models of disability. I thus hope to demonstrate through this thesis both disability's continued cultural importance and the utility of an analysis grounded in contemporary disability theory. Expanding upon Tobin Siebers' concept of "disability aesthetics" and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson's theory of "misfitting," …

No Player Is Ideal: Why Video Game Designers Cannot Ethically Ignore Players’ Real-World Identities, Erica L. Neely

Philosophy and Religion Faculty Scholarship

As video games flourish, designers have a responsibility to treat players and potential players justly. In deontological terms, designers are obliged to treat all of them as having intrinsic worth. Since players are a diverse group, designers must not simply focus on an idealized gamer, who is typically a straight white male. This creates a duty to consider whether design choices place unnecessary barriers to the ability of certain groups of players to achieve their ends in playing a game. I examine the design implication of this for the gameworld, avatar design, and accessibility to players with disabilities. I also …

Empowerment Of People Of All Abilities, Kasia Matlak

Masters Theses

For my thesis, I sought ways to redefine disability, by focusing on people with lower limb amputations. I focused on the most troublesome part of their daily interaction with a prosthesis, which is a socket. My primary concern was to improve the experience with it, as it is where prosthesis attaches to the body. I looked at disability, prosthetics, body image, identity, and loss. After an amputation surgery, people experience a grief that is comparable to the loss of a loved one. Historically, some people deal with grief by creating and performing rituals. Those rituals have proved to be helpful; …

Raeleen Kao Interview, Beena Patel

Asian American Art Oral History Project

BIO: Raeleen Kao is a drawer, printmaker, and amateur competitive eater aka glutton residing in Chicago with a Charles Brand etching press, a red tabby, and forty plants.

Her prints and drawings have been exhibited in museums and galleries across the country most notably at the International Museum of Surgical Science, the Monmouth Museum of Art, Bert Green Fine Art, the Smith College Museum of Art, Tory Folliard Gallery, Firecat Projects, and Normal Editions Workshop. Her work has been represented at SELECT Fair New York, the Editions and Artist Books Fair in New York, the Cleveland Fine Print Fair, the …

Wax Bodies: Candles, Queerness, & Taking Up Space, Moya Shpuntoff

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

My partner and collaborator Callaway Fox and I use queer surrealist installation, craft practices, and performance in order to address queer and disabled temporality, articulating our experiences as disabled queer femme artists through abstracted and literal exploration of femme bodies in space. In performance and installation works Hospital Performance: Part I and Hospital Performance: Part II, we responded to our experience of marginalization, medical malpractice, and emotional isolation, ultimately exploring queer and disabled temporality through queer surrealism. Hand-poured scented candles became metaphors for queer and disabled bodies, and along with other craft practices used in this work, are a …

The Impact Of User-Generated Interfaces On The Participation Of Users With A Disability In Virtual Environments: Blizzard Entertainment's World Of Warcraft Model, Donald Merritt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

When discussing games and the experience of gamers those with disabilities are often overlooked. This has left a gap in our understanding of the experience of players with disabilities in virtual game worlds. However there are examples of players with disabilities being very successful in the virtual world video game World of Warcraft, suggesting that there is an opportunity to study the game for usability insight in creating other virtual world environments. This study surveyed World of Warcraft players with disabilities online for insight into how they used interface addons to manage their experience and identity performance in the game. …

Design For Dementia, Gregor Timlin

Books/Book chapters

This book describes a two-year collaborative research project between the Helen Hamlyn Centre at the Royal College of Art and Bupa. It explores how better product and environment design can improve quality of life for care home residents with dementia. The design ideas developed are a practical response to the challenge of congnitive decline and can be retrofitted to existing care homes as well as applied to new developments.

Stories From A Chair: A Life Exquisite, Jessica Elaine Blinkhorn

Art and Design Theses

Exquisite is defined as carefully selected or sought out. I believe myself to be a selected soul placed in a body of circumstance. My work is self-explorative and telling of those circumstances in hopes of evoking empathy. Our bodies function and exist on many different levels. What I understand as normal for most differs vastly from what is normal for me. I aim to offer my perspective on the world, establish understanding, and blur the lines of normalcy.