We started with the topic of disabilities

A project by: Adèle, Nathalie, Samantha, Milou and Shalina

Research

Inspirational art projects

Small interventions to gather information

Our questionaire

The answers we received

Instagram

Postboxes around the school

Most common answers collected from our anonymous postboxes:

The question we raised: 

Timelapse of us making the postboxes

We placed these boxes around the school in four different places

Where do we go from here? > The making part

Social Practice 2.3

Demonstration of how someone could hand in their answer

Placing the box

We present to these people different scenarios and they can write how they feel about this

Food

Elevator

Change of schedule

Messy space

One of the main reasons why we chose to do this form of intervention was because it could be done anonymously. We noticed that when we were handing out these questionnaires people didn't feel comfortable going very deep on this topic. That's also why we also changed the question to a more direct approach and get more serious answers.

We tried our best to secure the boxes on the wall as well as possible, but unfortunately, they kept on falling off the wall. We did however get some interesting answers, check below for the responses.

This was the first intervention that we did. We really felt like this approach wasn't just awkward for us, but also for the people filling in the questionnaire. When we read back the answers, most of them were jokes and not very serious.

We realized that we should have formulated the questions a little bit better, and should have narrowed them down.

There were some interesting answers. Someone answered for example that they are not able to live without guilt.

It wasn't very helpful to gain intel on people their invisible disabilities in a medical way, but it was fascinating to gain insight into what people feel like they can't do and how they find a way to go around this.

Using Instagram as a tool to collect answers was very useful for us. Even if we only got two answers, it gave us the insight we needed to go further into our making phase. In one of the answers, someone said that they are not sure whether to call what they are going through a disability. This got us thinking, when can you call yourself (dis)abled?

One of our main goals was to include people in our project. The way we want to do this is by creating a digital archive, where people would get a few scenarios presented and can write how they feel about certain situations.

After finishing writing the scenarios people would end up with a page where you can scan through so you can read about other people their experiences.

With this we want people to be more conscious and also question their definition of what a disability is. Because throughout the project the issue of understanding and knowing what it is was hard for us to put into words.

What better way to get information about people than from the people themselves? We set out to collect a maximum of testimonies in order to further orient ourselves within our project. To do so, we experimented with multiple information collecting methods: Instagram surveys, paper questionnaires, and a ballot vote-like system.

We learned a great lot from this as we observed which of these techniques were more effective/successful. Indeed, it seemed online-based surveys allowed for both more honest and complete responses (the 'screen' barrier added an extra layer of anonymity and its voluntary aspect constituted further incentive for people to participate and answer sincerely).

We looked into how disabilities had been represented throughout history, artists who used their impairments to their advantage, and got inspired by the different ways of archiving shown in class.

As we explored the theme of disabilities, we looked into what it even meant to be disabled.

What percentage of people does it concern? What is ableism? What role does society carry regarding accessibility?

We also carried a first small assignment as we tested the limits of this definition by proposing an intervention on the topic of language barriers.

Prototype of our scenario system

Website lay-out

This was an assignment that we did together in class. For this assignment, we had to collect data to put in our archive. We did this by walking around the school and looking for things that someone with a disability might have trouble with when they navigate themselves through the academy.

At first, we were mainly focused on people with physical disabilities, but as we started to explore more, we realized that there are also difficulties for people with invisible disabilities.

Take the Dutch language, for example, not everyone speaks Dutch, and yet a lot of text that is written on posters, signs, etc is not translated properly for international students.

That's why we took this poster as an example. The information given on this poster could be important for international students, and yet they can't read it.

We decided to dissect some of the phrases and started off by adding the English translation to the poster, so people could join in and add the meaning of the phrases in their own language.

The first assignment in class

The outcome

Some examples:

Dividing scenarios

We really liked the name 'Invisible Barriers' so we decided to name our project after this.

The result of last class together

Testimonies we collected from people by letting them look at the scenarios

Elevators:
 
I have been scared of elevators since I was 11 years old. I don’t like being in a small space and not being in control of whether I can leave or not. It feels very claustrophobic. Some elevators are better than others. I don’t mind glass elevators very much for example, and I am more trusting of elevators in a hospital than anywhere else, but they all make me anxious.

Food:
 
When I was 12 I was diagnosed with diabetes type 1. Ever since then I need to administer insulin for every carb that I eat. There are very little types of food without any carbs in it, even vegetables and sauces have carbs in them. I try to weigh a lot of my food, and things like a slice of bread, or an apple for example are all things that I have memorized. I never forget to administer my insulin, but sometimes I have to take a gamble since there is no way to calculate all carbs in a meal correctly. When this goes wrong it makes me feel really sick.

Medication: 
 
I change the system of my insulin pump every three days. Sometimes this goes wrong and that’s very frustrating. Every now and then the system won’t connect correctly and my blood sugar levels will rise. The needle can sometimes be very hurtful as well, especially when I hit a blood vessel I can be in a lot of pain.

Pool:

I have very poor vision. Although I've had access to resources such as glasses and lenses, it still proves itself to be quite challenging at times. One of those instances is the pool. As a child, I was forced to attend swim lessons at school; unfortunately I couldn't wear my glasses and thus was rendered almost blind. I couldn't see what the teacher was doing/teaching and once in the water, I was even more disoriented. To this day, pools and the ocean aren't a very pleasant experience for me as I always have to be mindful of possible infections (due to lenses) and being able to perceive my surroundings.

Crowds of people:

Whenever I’m in a space where there are many people, I always feel very self-conscious. I start to think about every little gesture that I make and it also feels like all eyes are on me, even if that is not even the case at all.

I know that it is all in my head but it is very hard for me to get rid of these thoughts. I also have trouble working in a space with people I don’t (actually) know because I always have the feeling that they are only paying attention to me.

Changing routine:

Changing routine is scary to me. I feel like I always need to know the who, how, why, when, and what. Otherwise, I get a lot of anxiety because of the unknown. I realized this when I was driving the other day, and the route that I usually take was closed off for construction work.

This is when I started to search step by step on Google Maps for what my new journey would look like. I really dreaded stepping in my car that day because it was not familiar to me.

Our process + concept video

How we divided the tasks: 

Samantha: Process + concept video
Adèle & Milou: Creating scenarios + collages
Nathalie: Creating the website
Shalina: Creating sounds + HotGlue