Provided the context I needed on accessible design. Learned a lot.

Another academic book in quar. I really enjoyed this. It was a shorter read than the length of the text made it look (7 chapters with a lengthy bibliography). As someone born pretty much at the dawn of ADA, life prior to the Americans with Disabilities Act didn't really occur to me. The book put into sharp focus the long 20th-century history of disability activism and how it continues today. I would recommend this book for anyone who is looking to get a 101 on accessible design in America. It should be noted that the text focused mainly on physical disability. But, as an intro to the concept, I think it would be hard to squeeze all disability into a singular book. Plus, it should be noted that physical disability was a real driver of the ADA, so focusing on the activism surrounding that access specifically made sense to me.

Very much an academic book - some of the language and argument had my eyes glazing over a bit - but worth a read for the breadth of the information it covers and the social shifts it investigates. What could have been a designer-centered history of stuff made for accessibility is instead centers folks with disabilities and their agency in interacting with the material world. It makes for a pretty interesting history of activism and cultural perceptions told through the story of objects and architecture.