Ability or disability – design for whom?

Abstract

The dilemma addressed is how private homes and their residents change when the home becomes a hybrid of both workspace and private space. When assistive technologies designed for institutions enter the home, the everyday practices of disabled persons and their relatives change in interaction with both the institutionalized artefacts and with the multiple actors involved in domiciliary care. Based on ethnographic research of two implementations of assistive technologies in Denmark, the article discusses this dilemma and how it provides the opportunity to rethink how assistive technologies are shaped in the interplay with everyday life in private homes. Through an emphasis on embodiment, script and domestication, the authors illustrate how relations are developed – or not developed – between the disabled person and the non-human artefacts.

Keywords:

• disability
• assistive technology
• script
• design
• domestication