Beyond Empathy: What the V&A's Design and Disability Exhibition Taught Me

A museum floor changed underfoot and so did my thinking. After a visit to the V&A’s Design and Disability exhibition, I came home energised and unsettled—in the best way—and unpack how inclusive design moves from a nice‑to‑have to the engine of real innovation and dignity. It caused me to question a stubborn myth: that able‑bodied designers solve problems for others. The stories on display point to something richer—design with, led and instigated by Disabled people, where everyday hacks and tools carry more power than glossy manifestos.

I connect those moments to our work in D&T education, including a new chapter by Debi Wynn on inclusion in and inclusion through design and technology. I talk about how accessibility has driven mainstream breakthroughs, like multi‑touch interfaces born from hand pain, and why policies such as the plastic straw ban can miss the mark when they ignore lived reality. Activism enters the frame too—kerb cuts, tactile paving, and accessible transport happened because people organised, pushed, and redesigned the rules.

Hopefully my chatter is practical and provocative: co‑design over token empathy, user research that doesn’t "other" people, modular solutions that embrace edge cases, and assessment that treats inclusion as a core quality attribute.

I also share what fell short—the exhibition book that couldn’t carry the feelings home.

If you care about design that serves everyone, and classrooms that teach students to lead with inclusion, you’ll find ideas here to test tomorrow.

Enjoyed the conversation? Subscribe, leave a review to help others find the show, and share it with your D&T community. Got thoughts or a story to add? Send a Speakpipe voice note or email—links in the show notes.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Purpose
• 0:23 A Day At The V&A Exhibition
• 1:45 Upcoming Series On SEND
• 2:55 Rethinking Empathy And Inclusion
• 4:09 Book Update And Inclusive Chapter
• 5:38 Inclusion In And Through DT
• 7:31 Challenging Ableist Assumptions
• 8:20 Design Details That Include
• 9:35 Co‑Design, Hacks, And Everyday Tools
• 11:20 Discomfort As A Design Signal
• 12:13 The Origins Of Touchscreen Tech
• 13:48 Collaborative Design
• 14:42 The Plastic Straw Debate Reframed
• 16:06 Beyond Percentiles: Designing For All

Transcript

Alison Hardy: 0:06

You're listening to the Talking DT Podcast. I'm Dr. Alison Hardy, a writer, researcher, and advocate of design and technology education. In each episode, I share views, news, and opinions about DT. Well, I haven't done this for a while, which is recording a podcast immediately after I've had a fantastic experience that I think, well, I think it's just useful in design and technology community to hear about. Partly selfishly because I'm just so excited about it. So I got home about an hour ago after a day in London with my one of my oldest mates, Steve, who I went to university at Brunel with. He's forbidden me from using his last name for some obscure reason, maybe doesn't want to be associated too closely with me. But Steve and I did um design and technology with education at Brunel back in the late 80s, early 90s. So that's how far back we go. And Steve is a design and technology teacher in London. I won't give too much away about him. But we went to today, to the VA, to the design and disability exhibition. And it was fab. It was absolutely fab. And I'm gonna put this out within the next 24 hours, which again, I've not done this for a while on the podcast, because I'm about to publish um a few episodes which I've recorded with teachers and teaching assistants who are working in the field of supporting children with special educational needs and disabilities. And that is not to equate what I've seen today in terms of their work, but I think there are many different facets to what we do in design and technology, and one of the things that we do is we talk about empathy. And this exhibition today, in terms of design and design disability, shook me out of my what might sometimes be a naive view of patronising empathy. And it it kind of took my breath away at times today. Now, because I'm really good at self-promotion, which if you've listened to this podcast for a while, you'll recognise, although I say that with some humility, um, is that we're currently in the final stages of editing the learning to teach design and technology in the secondary school book. And we've got a new chapter in that book that is about inclusive education in design and technology. And a fantastic teacher called Debbie Wynne is writing this chapter, and we've kind of played around with different angles of the chapter because for us it's not just about um giving advice to the readers, that's the student teachers, about how to work with uh children with special educational needs in the D classroom, but it's also about inclusive inclusion and diversity. Excuse my I have already had a glass of wine as well, um, that in its broadest sense, which does link to empathy, but also that one of the things in design and technology that I think we try and teach children is about how do we encourage the children that we're teaching to see different viewpoints. So it's not just about inclusion in design and technology. This is what Debbie writes about, it's about inclusion through design and technology. So it's thinking about not just about the children with special educational needs and disabilities, how they are, their education is included within design and technology, either in a mainstream setting or in a special education setting, and some of the people coming up in the next couple of weeks, work in those backgrounds, sorry, work in those contexts. Um, but it's also about how do we um demonstrate inclusion through design and technology. And I've talked about this quite a while ago around how are the children in our classrooms represented in the exemplars we give and the way we view knowledge and design. And in the debates in design and technology book, that's one of the things that's addressed through the chapter by Misha Gumbo about indigenous uh technology, uh technological knowledge, you know, ways of knowledge um in technological in indigenous communities. So I'm kind of tripping over my words because I'm trying to make lots of connections here. I've made no notes um for recording this episode, so you're getting my really raw thinking about this. So there's this inclusion in, inclusion through in the way we um the the different uh pupils, teachers, educators involved in design and technology are represented, that they're not othered, seen as um exceptional, but they're but everybody is seen as included within. And then there's and then I suppose Mishak's champ chapter links to the the final way of thinking about in this chapter about inclusion through, is and I think this where it links to this um exhibition I saw today, Design and Disability at the VA, it's it's not about being about people who are able-bodied or able-minded, and I'm going to use all of the correct incorrect language potentially, and I apologize in advance, and I'm happy to be called out on that. Um it's about the assumption that people who are able-bodied, normal, and I'm putting inverted commas there, solve disability, and that's one of the things that this exhibition today really challenged, really dug underneath, and was uncomfortable as somebody who's able-bodied to engage with. Um, its inclusivity was throughout, and Steve picked up on this. That for example, most of the flooring around the exhibition was hard until you got near the exhibits when the texture of the floor changed to carpet. Just a small change, but it was seismic about inclusion. There was a group there of people with a variety of disabilities, and in some situations, maybe not so much now, but maybe I'm just rose-tinted glasses here, may well have felt excluded, you know, because they weren't quiet. They were talking about being in the exhibition and the things that they were seeing. Um, and actually, it was a privilege to be able to eavesdrop on those conversations, and one of them was quite emotional at one point talking about why is it like this? Why, why, why are we not seen? And again, hats off to the VA at the start of the exhibition, they said that some people going around the exhibition who may have disabilities or difficulties or challenges might find some parts of the exhibition uncomfortable. Not uncomfortable, that's not the word they used at all, that's my projection, might find it um it might touch touch them in a way that kind of wakened emotional feelings, and that those of us who weren't touched in the same way needed to respect that and be with that in that moment. So I felt the whole thing was really really representative, and another thing that's hats off at the VA, this was about design, and it was in some cases design with so people who were able-bodied, working with people who had physical disabilities, about spaces. Sometimes it was about people with disabilities designing, and there was a whole load of things about um hacking um and modifying people who had disabilities, modifying current things to make them work, and and some of that was hugely powerful. Um, there was a fantastic video about a slight modification. Well, not modification, about a tool to use to pull buttons through. I know my mum is has now got arthritis and and she's really struggling with some of the tops that she's got, and I just stood there and I thought such a simple solution. But also um hacks like putting you know hooks on the top of um beauty creams to be able to twist it because they um people who might have sensitive hands or arthritis or difficulty in in putting their hands around a circle to un to turn something to unscrew it, but actually having a hook that they could put their finger through or something through to twist, and that was just a straightforward hack. So it it was like so on so many layers this exhibition. I I am rambling here, but it's my my ramble is my passion, um, and my the the way it touched me and the way it challenged me and it made me uncomfortable, and I think it's good to be made uncomfortable by design. I think that's what good design does, it makes us yeah, it it sits in a way that makes us feel a discomfort because it challenges our assumptions. I shared on LinkedIn about um one of the things that I'd seen at the exhibition, um, which was about touch screen, and it was about um how the touchscreen was actually developed by an engineer who needed to replace a keyboard partly because of his severe hand pain. So he and somebody else created a touch screen keyboard to use sensors to track movements like pinching, swiping, and scrolling. Doesn't that sound familiar? Well, it turns out they initially marketed it to people with hand disabilities, but in 2005 it was sold to Apple and they incorporated its multi-touch features into the first iPhone. Now I would have had the assumption, if I'd really thought about touch screens, that that was an able-bodied person's solution, whereas in actual fact, this was a response to somebody's disability trying to find a way through. And so I think we need to be brought up short sometimes about some of the assumptions that we make. There's a TikTok account that I picked up, um, I I'm not don't really go on to TikTok around 3D printing and occupational therapy, about customized assistive devices made by occupational therapists and make as many of them disable people themselves. You know, that that's that's collaborative design that isn't being done to, that's done with and led by. And then there was this other one, and I'm I'll try and put some of these photographs in the show notes if I remember. The plastic drinking straw was banned in the UK because of its damage to the environment. But actually, for many people, the plastic drinking straw, people with disabilities, difficulties in holding things or drinking, the plastic drinking straw is better than a paper one because it has more structure and stability to it. And when they're out, they might not necessarily have a metal drinking straw, or they might have to have several of them, or they're expensive. So actually, by banning those, it excludes people, and then actually people with a disability is the implication, are made to feel bad because they are damaging the environment. And so it's all this stuff about it's about designing for for all, not designing for some. And it made me think about how when I said teach about ergonomic data, you know, working between the fifth and the 95th percentile. But I kind of think that's blown out of the window now. I think this is about designing for all. And there was there was stuff about um activists, disabled activists, and what they'd done to disrupt, to make people who had the power to make legislation and make things different and make things change, actually put things in place through legislation to put a dip in the pavement, put a tactile um slab, you know, at the edge of the pavement. All of those sorts of things had to be fought through to make transport, to legislate that transport was um accessible to all. All of that was just was just so powerful. So I've talked for quite a while, it's probably been a bit of a ramble. I'm hoping you can get my my passion about this, but all of this to me links together the episodes I've got coming up that are about people who are exploring how to make classrooms in design and technology excuse me, more inclusive. Those that are already doing that, how those in mainstream can learn from that, how some of our assumptions about where design originates need to be blown out of the water, and how inclusive design isn't about being done too, it needs to be collaborative. And this also links to a post that I made this morning about the word stakeholders, um, and it and it's not about othering, it's not about making somebody different. Um and it's just fantastic. I'm hoping you can get the idea that it was just fantastic, and if you're in England and you can, then please go and see this exhibition. Um, I've got two criticisms from the V of the VA. The the the image on their website doesn't do the exhibition justice. I don't think it really explains what the exhibition is about through that image. And the book, I kind of wanted to buy it because I wanted to bring home with me something from the exhibition. But me and Steve spent quite a while looking at it in the shop before we were kind of like not sure about this, and then afterwards we kind of went wanting to buy it, but came away not buying it. And so it's how do we come on, VA, how can we take this home with us to kind of keep these things at the forefront of our minds? So it it was it was really fantastic, um, and it's challenged my thinking, and hopefully, my evening ramble after a glass of wine has challenged yours. And I hope you enjoy the next few episodes from different people within the design and technology community with different perspectives. There's very little research in this area for design and technology. We make many claims about the inclusivity of design and technology, um, but to support these claims we need some research, and so I'm hoping that these conversations might get some people thinking. As ever, thanks for listening. Please forgive me for my ramble, and I hope you've enjoyed it. I'm Dr. Alison Hardy, and you've been listening to the Talking DT Podcast. If you enjoyed the podcast, then do subscribe on whatever platform you use and do consider leaving a review as it does help others find the podcast. I do the podcast because I want to support the DT community in developing their practice, so please do share the podcast with your DT community. If you want to respond to something I've talked about or have an idea for a future episode, then either leave me a voice memo via Speakpipe or drop me an email. You can find details about me, the podcast, and how to connect with me on my website, dralisonhardy.com. Also, if you want to support the podcast financially, you can become a patron. Links to Speakpipe, Patreon, and my website are in the show notes. Thanks for listening.