Artist, designers and public- look at their hands.
We use them to elucidate a point, comfort each other when the installation breaks down, ask for room for our wheelchair and to speak to each other in ASL.
Tonight, at the Inclusive Design Institute we see more hand gestures than ever.
Some installations are all about user interface design, others beg to be touched. And at this exhibition you can.
Accessibility is not a word that OCADU only throws around in its second year Inclusive Design class.
Although we need more of it in every class, you can see on a night like tonight that the designers and artists of OCADU start thinking about their project with Access as a starting point.
Not something dropped in when your project is done, but something without which your project can’t get off the ground at all.
At OCADU students- people with disabilities- design.
They are the ones making us question the constructs around disabilities.
And they have done it with humour, with electronics, with sadness, anger, with pencils, with wood, with metal and with the cool, clear knowledge that they are unique, excellent designers and artists whose disabilities and experience are a terrific source of inspiration.