Sara Hendren spoke on re-inventing design to be inclusive of all people
Sara Hendren, a design professor at the Olin College of Engineering, visited BYU on October 28 as part of the Listen Up! Lecture series. The series is an opportunity for students and faculty to gain new perspectives on art rooted in diverse backgrounds.
Hendren is an artist and writer who advocates for and focuses on redesigning infrastructure for people with disabilities. Her work focuses on making universal designs—inclusive designs—based on collective needs.
During her lecture, Hendren discussed her book “What Can a Body Do?: How We Can Meet the Built World” and her research on creating people-friendly designs as our bodies face changes from age, accidents or disabilities.
Hendren shared stories of people with disabilities who changed her perspective on disability and accessibility.
She told the story of Chris, a man who was born with only one arm and has had six or seven different prosthetics made for him throughout his life. Hendren explained how she learned from Chris that anyone is still capable of doing the things they love, regardless of physical disabilities.
Hendren also shared the story of Alice, a girl who performs and dances for audiences on uniquely engineered platforms that accommodate her wheelchair.
“Their idea about what engineering is [was] re-framed and re-imagined watching Alice do something beautiful that can’t be done on two legs,” Hendren said. “Building a body of work matters.”
During her lecture, Hendren commented that “all our tech is assistive” and that reconsidering our own relationship to giving and receiving assistance can allow us to better help those who need the most assistance. “[It is about trying to] reimagine your relationship with help-giving and receiving,” she said.
Hendren’s challenge for the audience to “Reimagine your relationship to ‘help’—getting help and receiving help” built on the idea of telling a different narrative about how we help others and receive help ourselves. Hendren said that when we are willing to help others and seek help ourselves, “We can find ourselves with some grace [and] we can find ourselves on the receiving end.”
Noticing when we ourselves and others need help is a fundamental part of creating inclusive universal design. Hendren said that universal design’s purpose is to make designs accessible for everyone—for people who have disabilities and for people who don’t.
Hendren discussed some examples of how universal design has been implemented in various communities around the world. Using what Hendren called “treatment by design,” these designs have helped deaf students, dementia patients and dancers with disabilities.
At the end of her lecture, Hendren emphasized the importance of inclusivity in our own communities. She invited the audience to challenge their own ideas of what “normal” looks like and to think about how they can create a space that is accessible to everyone. “These questions are going to stay with us,” Hendren said.