Disability Driven Development

This entry is written by Amelia Laumann and Marloes de Valk.

Disability Driven Development (DDD) is a practice that reimagines computing from a disabled perspective, challenging its seemingly seamless and stable hegemonic operations. It asks who is left out of creating (and joyfully using) digital technology, and how this can be changed. It is a practice by and for those who did not get to shape computing to meet their needs. It is a work related to crip technoscience, a practice of critique, alteration, and reinvention of our material-discursive world¹. It is also heavily inspired by "fourth wave" womanist thinkers like EbonyJanice Moore, drawing on the notion of "a revolution that does not cost us our whole spirit, soul, and bodies."² DDD was coined by Amelia Laumann to describe her work on SpoonStack ³.

Currently computing is stuck in a catch-22: while nobody is better qualified to create access solutions than disabled people themselves, systemic oppression and exclusion result in a situation where those with access needs rarely have the resources to envision or implement those solutions. The history of disability justice demonstrates an abundance of curb-cut effects—situations where focusing on access for one group, yields ideas, changes and solutions that are beneficial to many more people than those in the group the changes were originally meant for.

This practice combines the desire to create things with and for a community, with the need for software and hardware that help navigate life as a disabled person. While disability is a focus, it is not an exclusive constraint of the approach. Instead, the idea is to centre the most-vulnerable across many different intersections of oppression and marginalization. Perhaps most crucially, the practice flows from a recognition that enjoying and appreciating our lives through creative, playful endeavours is both our innate right, and a vital form of radical praxis in and of itself. Through empowering the disabled, the goal of this development paradigm is:

"to cut deeply into the heart of imperialist, white-supremacist, settler-colonial ideas of worth, and to undermine the capitalist concepts of who 'should' have access to the means to create whatever we want" —Amelia Laumann⁴.

DDD currently consists of tiny pockets of dispersed efforts but strives for collaboration to expand what this project can be, on many different fronts simultaneously. Spoonstack is a team of two who'd love to connect to other communities. They'd like to keep their team small and to work with people they have meaningful relationships with, to allow giving sufficient care and attention to the less digitally-focused and more human-focused aspects of DDD's philosophy ⁵. They envision many small 'bubbles' to pop up with people using their tools, developing them further or creating their own disability-driven development projects, occasionally coordinating and sharing between the bubbles. All their code is published with Unlicense, a public domain equivalent, allowing others to copy, modify, publish, use, compile, sell, or distribute it ⁶. Although they fully support protecting the rights of people to do what they like with their devices and software, they want to point out that nothing in the FLOSS space is actively anti-ableist in any way. The worst aspects of hegemonic tech go unchallenged in that space and most notable projects are riddled with issues of sexism, misogyny, racism, classism, and so on. There are pockets of people who do better, but overall, FLOSS is behind the curve when it comes to its politics.

DDD addresses barriers of access to programming, which relies heavily on text, specifically the English language and the Latin alphabet, with specialized 'languages' that are structured in very specific ways. If that weren't enough of a barrier, the programming world deals with a deeply entrenched bigotry. The resulting lack of access to programming reduces the quality of software, since the creativity involved in thinking about computing through a disabled and trans*computational lens is excluded, denying disabled and other people the quality of life that software could help them achieve ⁷.

DDD is based on three premises:

1. There is no "right answer", DDD takes a situated approach to development, with care for specific needs and wishes in specific contexts.

2. The multiply-marginalized are in charge. Full stop.

3. The only measure of success is whether people who ordinarily are excluded from technology-creation get to make the things they want and need.

Disability Driven Development doesn't cater to affluent, young-to-middle-aged, able-bodied and able-minded, cishet, white males. It is by and for the disabled. It doesn't focus on what we cannot do, but on what we need in order to thrive. DDD is intersectional. The ideas behind DDD stem from Amelia's personal experience of growing up trans and autistic in a shockingly hostile and abusive environment, which frequently left her struggling with isolation, mental health issues, and a deep sense of despair. Picking up computer programming offered her an outlet for her creative energy, and ultimately afforded a channel for her to 'digitally actualize' many of the parts of herself she did not dare to reveal in daily life. This has left her with a profound appreciation of the importance of being able to play, experiment and create, especially for the most marginalized and oppressed. There are rarely opportunities to engage with technology playfully and joyfully in a 'professional' technical context, making this an experience not many people have been able to share... yet!

DDD reverses the point of departure of software (and hardware) development. Instead of the tech industry determining what people will be 'served', marginalised people determine what they need themselves. DDD's approach resonates with that of art collective MELT's 'unstable computing'⁸:

"Unstable computing's clock works on crip time (bending clocks to meet disabled people rather than meeting turbo-capitalist’s super-speed clock) and is in touch with the trans*cestors (understanding that familial and friendship-based timelines are as long and deep as other accounts of family). It accounts for the effects of computing on the Earth’s climate (tracing material realities and unfolding how colonial extraction continues to fuel computational infrastructure and production at all levels)." —MELT⁹

Rather than serving the continued exploitation of people and planet, DDD directs its creativity towards the enrichment and cultivation of all life. Computing is thought of as more than silicon and bytes. DDD is dreaming of a possible future, when by letting go of the materials and substances used today, there is space for upholding good relationships among everything that shares life on our planet¹⁰. It's impossible to predict what will become possible, but the aim is a different materiality of computing, one that doesn't waste or pollute ¹¹. If computing doesn't follow the laws of capitalist extraction, there is space for a slower, more organic, possibly even seasonal computing which doesn't 'use' natural resources but takes part in the cycles of growth and decay, of soaking up and replenishing. Instead of throwing away our old electronics, we compost them in our gardens ¹². In the present, DDD thinks in terms of 'less': less electricity consumption, less manufacturing, less fancy but ultimately useless "showy" features, less reliable network connectivity, less permanence, less reliance on even electronics and micro-circuitry and semiconductors as we understand them today. Technology can and should return to exploring more relationally-oriented and ethical ways of co-existing with the rest of our planet and everything here ¹³.