Design for user empowerment

have noticed that some of the best work comes when there are people with disabilities on the design and development team, contributing to all aspects of the design and implementation, not just as participants in user studies. I call this strong engagement by users design for user empowerment, meaning, in its strongest sense, that the users of the technology are empowered to solve their own accessibility problems. Here, I will try to explain, mostly using examples, why this approach is so powerful. Although I am not disabled, I am very fortunate to have lived around disabled people my entire life. My parents were deaf college graduates and successful professionals. I learned from them that disability is not a tragedy, but rather simply part of the diversity of life. I also learned from them the power of technology to be transformational, not in any kind of medical sense but in a purely social sense. When they and their friends got TTYs, surplus Western Union Teletypewriters attached to acoustic modems, in the early 1970s, they could finally communicate easily at a distance with friends and colleagues around the country by typing, or what we now call texting or instant Insights → It is important for designers of technology for people with disabilities to engage with people with disabilities to achieve the most usable designs. → Better yet is empowering people with disabilities to design and build the technologies themselves. → Two features of design for user empowerment are self-determination and technical expertise. Design for User Empowerment