What Can a Body Do?

The built world is constructed on a set of hidden assumptions. The design of a chair, the shape of a doorknob, the steps to a house: nearly everything human beings make is assistive technology, meant to bridge the gap between body and world. Yet unless the misfit between our body and the world is acute enough to be considered ''disability,'' we may never consider the ideas on which the everyday world is based. In a series of fascinating, provocative explorations that draw on cutting-edge disability theory, Sara Hendren translates this secret language of design and invites us to reboot it.