Design meets disability

Pullin challenges the visual and cultural separation of assistive products from mainstream design. Through examples from prosthetics, hearing aids, furniture, fashion and interaction, he shows that disability-related objects express identity as well as function. The book’s EDI contribution is to move beyond minimum accessibility toward aesthetics, choice, pleasure and self-representation. This matters because products designed only through a medical lens can stigmatise users or deny them the variety routinely available to others. By proposing a two-way exchange between disability design and mainstream design, Pullin reframes disabled people as participants in design culture rather than recipients of special provision. The book remains influential for understanding how dignity and identity are materialised through objects.