Innovation Lab: The Lows of High Tech

Britt Young was born without part of her arm, but because society was not designed to be quite accommodating for everyone’s physical and mental differences, she must figure out how to adapt her situation to navigate through life. Throughout her life, Britt has used various prosthetic devices to assumingly “alleviate” the strain that disability has caused her, and overall to enhance her quality of life. However, these devices are not as helpful as they appear to be. Most often, they are uncomfortable, do not function properly, are troublesome, and ineffective. These issues prove most prosthetic limbs to be problematic, which lead to many people not using assistive devices at all. Britt mentions that having a “flashy” prosthetic arm makes her a target for entertainment, and the arm is more of a party trick rather than a useful product.  

In the Youtube video, “Why I Don’t Wear A Prosthetic Arm | The Real Reason,” Grace mentions that she doesn’t wear a prosthetic because she doesn’t feel like it helps her in any way, and doesn’t need to hide the fact that she’s different from “normal” people. She doesn’t need to put something on to help her feel like herself, and not wearing an assistive device has helped her become less paranoid of her appearance and what other people think. 

In the TEDx video, Stella Young talks about disabled people being seen as objects of inspiration rather than real human beings. Society views disability as a “bad” thing, but it also makes you “exceptional,” which is incredibly wrong because disabled people aren’t doing anything out of the ordinary, they are just using their bodies to their full capacity. I find her concept of inspiration porn very interesting because it shows how society is the biggest problem and injustice in the world. The perceived solution to a disability is always to “fix” it or build something to make up for that missing part of the body. These inventions are always trying to erase a person’s disability, but a better and more efficient perspective is to design a world that accommodates to all types of people

One example of technology that was designed to help people with disabilities is screen readers for those who are visually impaired. These screen readers convert digital text to speech, which allow visually impaired people to interact with digital content like websites. This also helps with social interaction online. One technology that was not necessarily designed while thinking about people with disabilities is the VR gaming consoles. Its main focus is providing interactive and visually engaging gaming environments, which is not accessible for blind people. Another example of an assistive technology that isn’t quite useful is mentioned in the reading, the new bionic arm Britt received. Although it looked cool and high tech, it was too heavy and heated up a lot, which made it very uncomfortable to wear everyday. It also couldn’t perform simple tasks like turning a doorknob, making it quite ineffective.