Disabled Dimensionalities: Normative expectations' impacts on disabled perceptions and spatialities

Abstract

As humans, we are expected to interact as fully functional 3D manipulators who can observe, handle, and act in three spatial dimensions. This is how users are considered in the design of many products and spaces. Ableism often gives people the perception that disabled people are inferior at manipulating, imagining, and navigating the world. We contest this perception using both our own experiences as disabled manipulators and narratives from other disabled people that speak to this presumption as limited imagination and consideration. In this theoretical contribution, we analyze the consequences of ableism in how spaces — digital, physical, imaginary in science fiction, present in practice and material configuration — operate in the way we think about the material and virtual world.

Keywords

• disability studies
• crip space
• spatialities
• cripistemology