Framing diversity: designing hearing aids from a deaf culture perspective

Deaf people are proud of their culture and the fact of not being able to hearing is rendered secondary to the positive experiences created by their social lives and 250-year-old history and culture. This reality is often misled by the adoption of medical criteria which regard Deafness as a medical condition measured against the “norm” of hearing people. This paper presents a research-through-design project which developed smart jewels to counteract the stigma of disability addressing functional and cultural needs of Deaf people. Workshops were organised involving Deaf people, makers/engineers, designers and Italian sign language interpreters who were engaged in a Thinking-through-making process where the experience of Deaf participants was exploited to drive embodied explorations of future hearing aids. The design case calls for a participatory design model in which designers and users can co-create solutions addressing not only the (dis)abilities of the body but and more importantly, the human experience.