V&A Museum South Kensington hosts Design and Disability, an exhibition that redefines the role of disabled, deaf, and neurodivergent people in the history of design. Curated by Natalie Kane, the exhibition is divided into three sections - Visibility, Tools, and Living - and brings together 170 objects, including fashion, graphics, architecture, photography, everyday objects, and video games, produced from the post-World War II era to the present. At the heart of the narrative are the creativity, protest, and expertise of disabled people as true authors, designers, and innovators, from a perspective that combines identity expression and social justice. The Visibility section focuses on how disabled people have asserted their identities through design and the media. On display are designer and activist Sky Cubacub's hypervisual ensemble, including a gender-affirming corset and a down-filled headpiece conceived as a sensory device, Maya Scarlette's hand-sewn costume for the Notting Hill Carnival inspired by Botticelli's Birth of Venus, and the photographic portrait First Swim after Rebirth by trans and autistic artist Marvel Harris. Alongside these works, editorials and magazines such as Able Zine and Dysfluent Magazine demonstrate how typography can become a means of representing specific neurological experiences, such as stuttering. The Tools section subverts the idea of the disabled person as a passive user, showing how objects are adapted, hacked, and reimagined. Highlights include Microsoft's Xbox Adaptive Controller, Wayne Westerman's Touchstream Keyboard - technology later used in the iPhone - and a series of DIY prosthetics, such as Cindy Garni's silicone makeup supports, which prove more effective than expensive robotic solutions. Design is also seen as a collective practice, through collaborative networks and mutual aid. Finally, Living explores how disabled people have transformed environments and relationships to imagine new ways of living. Examples include Helen Stratford's Public S/Pacing rest blanket, which critiques the inadequacy of urban space, Wendy Jacob's Squeeze Chaise Longue, inspired by Temple Grandin's "hugging machine," and the final decompression area, conceived for sensory regulation and featuring objects designed by disabled occupational therapists. Design and Disability is an exhibition designed with radical attention to accessibility: each space is designed to be inclusive of everyone, with tactile maps, sensory surfaces, sign language videos, and rest paths. The message is clear: disability is not a limitation but a culture, an embodied knowledge, a design resource. Far from pious rhetoric, the exhibition celebrates a living, ironic, and resilient history, in which design is a language of self-determination.
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