Equalities design: Toward post-normative equity

This chapter discusses an “Equalities Design” approach that informs and guides my practice as a designer. Using the frame of post-normative equity, I have been developing Equalities Design tools, methods and approaches that interrogate and queer normative (including neuronormative) assumptions in order to create alternative bodymind explorations and experimental outputs. These explorations and outputs can be contrasted with design solutions that have been presented as inclusive but are in fact simplistic design responses that fail to take into account intersectionality and thus the profound challenges encountered by multiply-marginalized groups. The chapter argues for the necessity of such an approach, and describes the “Design Exosystem” Framework that guides my work. The chapter also briefly introduces my involvement with the Wellcome Trust's Design and the Mind initiative, focused on co-creation and engagement with neurodivergent, disabled and D/deaf people and groups, and which produced outputs such as toolkits and a public-facing 5-day Program in the Wellcome Collection Hub.