Designing with people with disabilities : adapting best practices of DIY and organizational approaches

Individualization of design is often necessary particularly when designing with people with disabilities. Maker communities, with their flexible Do-It-Yourself (DIY) practices, offer potential to support individualized and cost-effective product design. However, efforts to adapt DIY practices in designing with people with disabilities tend to face difficulties with regard to continuous commitment, infrastructure provision and proper guidance. We carried out interviews with diverse stakeholders in the disability services sector and carried out observations of local makerspaces to understand their current practices and potential for future collaborations. We found that makerspace participants face difficulties in terms of infrastructure provision and proper guidance whereas Disability Service Organizations face difficulties in continuous expertise. We suggest that artful infrastructuring to blend the best of both approaches offers potential to create a sustainable community that can design individualized technologies to support people with disabilities.