Design, Disability, and Critical Pedagogy in STS

Critical Science and Technology Studies (STS) pedagogy involves not only the content of courses but also the design of curricula, classrooms, and buildings. This article explores disability and design through pedagogical vignettes from the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). We demonstrate how “crip” pedagogy critiques compliance-based approaches to architecture and accommodations, and offers constructive curriculum-building that improves them. The first two vignettes examine how buildings and classrooms are designed for specific bodyminds, contrasting the design of the National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) in the 1960s with RIT's contemporary spaces and examining classrooms designed for spoken English and mediated communication. The final two vignettes focus on transforming STS curricula to explicitly address and challenge technoableism. One describes ethnographic work in engineering courses on medical device design, and the last examines course assignments that engage students as accessibility partners to teach anti-ableism. These examples, we argue, illustrate the potential for co-created changes in higher education that equip students to interrogate and act on issues of disability, health, wellness, and accommodations. We develop “crip” STS pedagogies to call on the field to incorporate more crip sensibilities into the theoretical contributions of disability studies and its practice in and around the classroom.