140: We are all disabled
Some thoughts on leveraging constraints given July is Disability Pride month
Sometimes the difference between a good morning and a challenging morning is five inches of vertical concrete.
Street curbs are a magnificent invention. Super necessary. Definitely one of the hallmarks of advanced civilization.
Unless you’re driving a 250 pound battery-powered wheel chair, like my son Felix was one morning a few weeks ago.
In this circumstance, civilization appears less advanced, not well designed, and quite a pain in the ass. Oh, my kingdom for a curb cut that isn’t several thousand feet away on the other side of the building. Don’t get me wrong, the power wheel chair is hugely enabling, just heavy. If we’d been using his manual wheelchair I would have lifted Felix and his chair onto the sidewalk. But in this moment, staring down a ridiculous five inch tall “No, you’re not going this way” barrier I thought about the decades of related frustrations which instigated the now global Disability Pride month.
Did you know July is Disability Pride month? Or that—if you’re in Minnesota—the Disability Pride Festival is this Thursday July 18 from 10am - 1:00pm at the State Capitol’s North Lawn? (All kinds of useful info on Wikipedia, PBS and the ARC, which includes links to various state festivals.)
And if you haven’t seen the fantastic movie Crip Camp about the people and movement which lead to the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, consider watching this informative trailer.
In many ways, the business of creativity—the realm I write about the most—is actually a process of identifying and leveraging constraints.
Adam Morgan and Mark Barden’s A Beautiful Constraint (author website, Amazon) is a robust resource when it comes to identifying and leveraging constraints in marketing. As I wrote, perhaps their greatest gift is an enabling mindset, to inhabit constraint or disability as a means of empowerment, since, “it forces everyone involved in the conversation to take responsibility for solutions.”
Dave Trott tells the story of Temple Grandin PhD, who almost singlehandedly changed the stockyard and slaughterhouse industries. Her disability proved an asset—a way of seeing the world which enabled her to help improve efficiencies, profitability, and the living conditions of the cattle.
Much of this, of course, is rooted in the assumptions of those minus certain types of disability.
Let’s take what remains of this month and stop assuming. How often do we look at our team process, our bureaucracies, our SOPs from the perspective of so-called disability? Likely not often enough.
Trott summarizes:
“Instead of demanding everyone stick to the same approved and accepted criteria. We should be looking for diversity, not just in gender and race but in all forms.”
So many of the constraints we face can benefit from the perspective of disability. Much of the disability literature makes the salient, conceptual point: When the world is designed acknowledging disabilities, everyone benefits. Got armloads of groceries or packages? Those handicap access buttons sure help. Want more people to attend concerts and events? Consider amending state law to require full-size adult changing tables in (most) public restrooms, as we’ve done here in Minnesota. Never mind the growing prevalence and utility of captioning on YouTube and TikTok.
We are all disabled, even if merely by our perspective.
Or as the writer Emily Ladau puts it,
“Disability is not a problem to be fixed, it’s a culture, it’s an identity. It’s something that so many of us celebrate.”
AI+Creativity Update
📸📱 If you’re an iPhone person, definitely check out the new Final Cut Camera app (App Store). Cult of Mac has a lengthy review. You get lots more granular control of lighting and focus than the regular iPhone camera app. Neat!
🤖🎥 Runway has a handy guide for leveraging its Gen 3 Alpha text-to-video platform. It’s a healthy reminder the video generation space still has a lot of evolving to accomplish. Getting what you want from a still image in Midjourney is much easier than the same request, but of motion in Luma, Runway, et al.
🤖🤔 Finally, here’s a music video from motion creator Arata Fukoe. Lyrics from ChatGPT; music via Suno; video generated by Luma, DreamMachine, Runway, and Kling with images from Midjourney. In other words: This is an artist not known for music, making music because AI made it possible.