Spanning the 19th to through the 21st century, this exhibition illuminates the lives of disabled people through the objects that they use. Prosthetics, orthotics, medical guides, glasses, hearing devices and more are featured to show the multifaceted ways that disabled people tinker with their objects to express identity, experiences that are often lost in history. But how can objects reclaim disability histories that are erased in archival records and in public memory?
Design is central to people's lives. Disabled people have created, designed, and adapted all sorts of technologes to fit their bodies, minds, lives, and identities to their environments. This exhibit showcases some of the little-known designs made by disabled people.
What is it like to live with a disability? In this section, disabled people share their own stories about living with, designing, or adapting technologies that improve or aid their disabled experiences.
Many things used by disabled people are adaptions to better engage with the environment around them. Rather than being limiting or painful, these things act, as Tobin Siebers describes in Disability Theory as “marvelous examples of the plasticity of the human form or as devices of empowerment.” Disabled people past and present have also used technologies and/or symbols of empowerment to assert their (intersectional) identities. The essays in this exhibit feature examples of adaptation technologies and identity assertion by disabled people. As well, essays explore how to analyze sources to bring forth "hidden histories" of disabled people and their lived experiences.
