Edifying data and co-creating with allies
A question of cross-disability and intersectional dimensions of disabled citizenship “written out of materiality of most GIS digital maps” engenders “thick mapping” allowing for complexities as “unfinished, unknown, and unfolding processes through politicized and humanistic questions” about access that transcends the compliance regimes of rehabilitation of work-force labor and consumption models. Materiality that reflects belonging and citizenship in public spaces, acknowledges cross-disability existence in ergonomics to include different kinds of movement and bodies in the built environment. “Thick mapping” according to Todd Presner, David Shepard, and Yoh Kawano in their book, Hypercities: Thick Mapping in the Digital Humanities, “give rise to forms of counter-mapping, alternative maps, multiple voices, and on-going contestations. Thick maps are not simply "more data" on maps, but interrogations of the very possibility of data, mapping, and cartographic representational practices.”
“A typical answer to compliance queries is "yes, the space complies with the law." Thick maps enable different answers, such as "although this space complies with legal standards, users report significant barriers to participation remain due to the way spaces are utilized and organized. The accessible entrance leads to stairs. Trashcans block the all-gender restrooms. The building is heavily scented (which is problematic for people with chemical sensitivities but allowed under law)." Narrative and participatory methods from the digital humanities and disability studies can thus inform how we imagine, make, and use maps, even transforming the norms of spatial representation. By asking different questions, practitioners can generate countermaps pushing beyond compliance.”[1]
Would asking the question of designing for parents and children in strollers as allies, more readily transform cross-disability and intersectional epistemological and pedagogical[2] projects reconceptualizes data-rich mapping to draw to attention to architectural places and spaces that institutions, governing agencies, and businesses to form to-do list in generating policies that are included new construction to comply in serving the public good both/and being served by rehabilitation? And how would benevolent big brother as surveillance impact the response to the compliance problems? Or is it a shift in valuation from pedagogy to cultural practices of community-focused behavior and belonging outweighing rugged independence? The narratives of independence whose root word is dependent seems at the heart of queries of where allies remedy isolation and manifest societal shifts AND create/sustain digital spaces for cross-disability’s own emerging self-realization as a virtual community.
by Jiyun Park
[2] Marianna Pavlovskaya, "Critical GIS as a Tool for Social Transformation," Canadian Geographer 62.1 (2018): 40–54; Johanna Drucker, "Humanities Approaches to Graphical Display," Digital Humanities Quarterly 5.1 (2011).
Comments
Post a Comment