5 ms·

No. Because you (and WHO) are consistently leaving out the obvious -- all of this is in comparison to "typical" human abilities. According to that definition, e

by kevhito 10y ago

No. Because you (and WHO) are consistently leaving out the obvious -- all of this is in comparison to "typical" human abilities. According to that definition, everyone living in a northern climate becomes disabled each winter, since none of us can survive outside without special clothing. And if humans could see magnetic lines, we'd all certainly be better matched to our earth environment, so does that mean all humans disabled?

ncphillips 10y ago
> According to that definition, everyone living in a northern climate becomes disabled each winter This seems valid to me. The prefix "dis-" is a negation prefix[1], and "abled" means to have a range of abilities[2], so it is equivalent to not-abled. Not having a range of abilities. There's nothing in this most basic description that suggests being disabled is an abnormal or permanent state. In the context of getting to the grocery store in the winter, I am quite literally disabled by the cold temperatures, unless I have some natural occurrence or form of technology that en-ables me–el nino, clothing, vehicles, underground tunnels. I am disabled from reading this screen if I don't have my glasses on. This is a permanent disability, but I can correct it by either putting on my glasses, or by making the text bigger. Our set of abilities is not immutable, and technology is just meant to add to this set. Microsoft's document is just about making designers aware that not everyone always has the same set of abilities as the designers themselves. Recognizing this allows us to design technology that helps more people in more situations. WHO did not change _the_ definition of "disabled", they _corrected their own_ definition to recognize that whether or not a person is disabled is a contextually dependent question. [1] http://www.dictionary.com/browse/dis- http://www.dictionary.com/browse/dis- [2] http://www.dictionary.com/browse/abled http://www.dictionary.com/browse/abled
- kevhito 10y ago
  I think my comment rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, and for that I apologize. Actually, I agree with almost everything the replies argue. My point -- which I did didn't make well -- was that I think using the word "disabled" in the WHO sense is either disingenuous or silly. Silly, because if everyone is disabled at all times, then the word becomes meaningless. Disingenuous in the sense that "not having a range of ability" implicitly really means having an unusually or unexpectedly limited or different (but not strictly larger) range of abilities as compared to some poorly-defined range for a "typical" human, without actually admitting that we are comparing against some standard. Yes, the standard is vague and poorly defined. And I agree that disability doesn't need to be permanent or easily visible or significant, that it is context dependent, and it obviously isn't binary. I have no qualms with the idea that everyone or nearly everyone is, at some point and in some ways, disabled. And perhaps most importantly, we should disentangle the concept of disability with moral/value judgments. Still, I think all of the examples I've seen on this thread are implicitly comparing against a standard but explicitly pretending they are not. You mention that you are disabled from reading your screen. Because many humans would have that ability. You didn't say you were disabled because you don't have the x-ray vision needed to see through walls. Just like nobody would say a person is disabled because their body doesn't produce enough fur or whale blubber to survive a new england winter.
ZenoArrow 10y ago
> "And if humans could see magnetic lines, we'd all certainly be better matched to our earth environment, so does that mean all humans disabled?" In the sense of being fully aware of our environment then yes, all humans are disabled in that regard. Furthermore, disability is not a binary categorisation where you're either disabled or you're not, it's a scale, but crucially it's a scale based on your abilities to engage in the world around you and inside of you. We only use typical human behavior as a measuring point so that we can categorise people in a binary fashion. In other words, you can look at disability through the lens of human society in order to class a person as disabled, but disability can be thought of in much more general terms, which is where the WHO definition comes in.
spdustin 10y ago
That would be true if the environment in which they lived was the natural, outside environment, but it's not. It's indoors, warm, and decidedly not disabling.
adisinom 10y ago
In some sense, yes. But more importantly, the problem with designing for a typical human is that they don't exist. So I see accessible design as robust designs -- ones that can handle variation in abilities as easily as we handle variations in browser window sizes.
- kevhito 10y ago
  I apologize. I didn't mean to suggest we should design for a "typical human" (even if such a thing existed or could be well defined), and I agree that we should design for a range of user abilities. I was trying (poorly) to discuss their definition "disabled", which seems unhelpful as it seems to be synonymous with "human".
  - adisinom 10y ago
    The definition suggests we should focus on the context that disables people -- the mismatch between abilities and affordances, because as you point out, disability being part of humanity isn't a useful result. For example, until the mid 20th century, deaf people in Martha's Vineyard might have been atypical (0.7% of population) but because islanders used MVSL, deaf islanders were not disabled. Later conditions changed, sign fell out of use, and deafness became a communication barrier. Sure, if more people were deaf, Martha's Vineyard would still use sign. But deafness itself is not a sufficient condition to be disabled... rather the direct cause is society.

by kevhito 10y ago

ncphillips 10y ago

> According to that definition, everyone living in a northern climate becomes disabled each winter This seems valid to me. The prefix "dis-" is a negation prefix[1], and "abled" means to have a range of abilities[2], so it is equivalent to not-abled. Not having a range of abilities. There's nothing in this most basic description that suggests being disabled is an abnormal or permanent state. In the context of getting to the grocery store in the winter, I am quite literally disabled by the cold temperatures, unless I have some natural occurrence or form of technology that en-ables me–el nino, clothing, vehicles, underground tunnels. I am disabled from reading this screen if I don't have my glasses on. This is a permanent disability, but I can correct it by either putting on my glasses, or by making the text bigger. Our set of abilities is not immutable, and technology is just meant to add to this set. Microsoft's document is just about making designers aware that not everyone always has the same set of abilities as the designers themselves. Recognizing this allows us to design technology that helps more people in more situations. WHO did not change _the_ definition of "disabled", they _corrected their own_ definition to recognize that whether or not a person is disabled is a contextually dependent question. [1] http://www.dictionary.com/browse/dis- http://www.dictionary.com/browse/dis- [2] http://www.dictionary.com/browse/abled http://www.dictionary.com/browse/abled

kevhito 10y ago
I think my comment rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, and for that I apologize. Actually, I agree with almost everything the replies argue. My point -- which I did didn't make well -- was that I think using the word "disabled" in the WHO sense is either disingenuous or silly. Silly, because if everyone is disabled at all times, then the word becomes meaningless. Disingenuous in the sense that "not having a range of ability" implicitly really means having an unusually or unexpectedly limited or different (but not strictly larger) range of abilities as compared to some poorly-defined range for a "typical" human, without actually admitting that we are comparing against some standard. Yes, the standard is vague and poorly defined. And I agree that disability doesn't need to be permanent or easily visible or significant, that it is context dependent, and it obviously isn't binary. I have no qualms with the idea that everyone or nearly everyone is, at some point and in some ways, disabled. And perhaps most importantly, we should disentangle the concept of disability with moral/value judgments. Still, I think all of the examples I've seen on this thread are implicitly comparing against a standard but explicitly pretending they are not. You mention that you are disabled from reading your screen. Because many humans would have that ability. You didn't say you were disabled because you don't have the x-ray vision needed to see through walls. Just like nobody would say a person is disabled because their body doesn't produce enough fur or whale blubber to survive a new england winter.

ZenoArrow 10y ago

> "And if humans could see magnetic lines, we'd all certainly be better matched to our earth environment, so does that mean all humans disabled?" In the sense of being fully aware of our environment then yes, all humans are disabled in that regard. Furthermore, disability is not a binary categorisation where you're either disabled or you're not, it's a scale, but crucially it's a scale based on your abilities to engage in the world around you and inside of you. We only use typical human behavior as a measuring point so that we can categorise people in a binary fashion. In other words, you can look at disability through the lens of human society in order to class a person as disabled, but disability can be thought of in much more general terms, which is where the WHO definition comes in.

spdustin 10y ago

That would be true if the environment in which they lived was the natural, outside environment, but it's not. It's indoors, warm, and decidedly not disabling.

adisinom 10y ago

In some sense, yes. But more importantly, the problem with designing for a typical human is that they don't exist. So I see accessible design as robust designs -- ones that can handle variation in abilities as easily as we handle variations in browser window sizes.

kevhito 10y ago
I apologize. I didn't mean to suggest we should design for a "typical human" (even if such a thing existed or could be well defined), and I agree that we should design for a range of user abilities. I was trying (poorly) to discuss their definition "disabled", which seems unhelpful as it seems to be synonymous with "human".
- adisinom 10y ago
  The definition suggests we should focus on the context that disables people -- the mismatch between abilities and affordances, because as you point out, disability being part of humanity isn't a useful result. For example, until the mid 20th century, deaf people in Martha's Vineyard might have been atypical (0.7% of population) but because islanders used MVSL, deaf islanders were not disabled. Later conditions changed, sign fell out of use, and deafness became a communication barrier. Sure, if more people were deaf, Martha's Vineyard would still use sign. But deafness itself is not a sufficient condition to be disabled... rather the direct cause is society.