A stair-climbing wheelchair might seem like a cool innovation. But for Liz Jackson, it's another example of what she calls a "disability dongle," a well-intended, but ultimately useless solution to a problem people disabled people never knew they had. Liz Jackson is a disability advocate, design strategist, and the founder of The Disabled List. She says people with disabilities need to be on the front lines of innovation and not just the recipients of design.

Accessibility for people with disabilities didn't just happen. Its history includes do-it-yourself ingenuity, activism, and shifts in how we think about the politics of design. Bess Williamson explores this evolution in her book Accessible America: A History of Disability and Design.

Empathy is considered to be good quality for designers thinking about truly inclusive design. But User Experience designer Amelia Abreu believes the trend of "trying on" a disability to build empathy into accessible design actually exclude disabled people from the design process.

This episode originally aired November 10, 2019.