This is a video version on my presentation, made in absentia, at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, November 2012, San Francisco, California.
In the presentation, I use use anthropological theories to propose an approach to design that focuses on undoing ableism (the system of domination that renders some bodies "other" within a set of cultural circumstances). Principally, this is an activist revision of ontological frames, proposing a non-dualist approach to the body, and a critique of expert knowledges as a starting point for (and profit as an endpoint for) design. In order to do so, I will, (1) review the concepts of disability, ableism, and universal design, (2) review critiques of universal design, (3) discuss interventions into ontologies of bodily difference from disability studies, critical design theory, ecofeminism, and ethnography, and (4) draw conclusions.
