Biographical Prototypes: Reimagining Recognition and Disability in Design

This paper aims to elevate stories of design by people with disabilities. In particular, we draw from counter-storytelling practices to build a corpus of stories that prioritize disabled people as contributors to professional design practice. Across a series of workshops with disabled activists, designers, and developers, we developed the concept of biographical prototypes: under-recognized first-person accounts of design materialized through prototyping practices. We describe how the creation of such prototypes helps position disabled people as central contributors to the design profession. The artifacts engendered an expanded sense of coalition among workshop participants while prompting reflection on tensions between recognition and obligation. We end by reflecting on how the prototypes-and the practices that produced them-complement a growing number of design activities around disability that reveal complexities around structural forms of discrimination and the generative role that personal accounts may play in their revision.