Design and Disability / Beyond the Visual

By Aisling Keavey, Extant Thinker-In Residence.

In the last six months at Extant, I have explored recurring themes of access, perception, and knowledge prioritisation across archiving, exhibitions, conferences, symposia, and academic texts. A core tension stands out: while inclusion is attempted, cultural institutions still favour visual conventions. Efforts often fail because access is seen as supplemental rather than foundational. This is clear in the Victoria and Albert Museum’s Design and Disability and the Henry Moore Institute’s Beyond the Visual.

Visiting Design and Disability at the V&A, I saw clearly how the museum requires visual engagement as the default way of encountering art. Though the exhibition gestures towards challenging ocular-centrism, the assumption of sight underpins the whole experience. The core argument – disability as culture and identity – breaks down when visual expectations remain central, reinforcing the contradiction between the exhibition’s stated aims and the actual experience.

Through my research, I see visibility is shaped by institutions. They choose which objects to display, frame narratives around them, and imagine who their audience is.

Objects in the exhibition, such as adaptive technologies, zines, fashion, and DIY prosthetics, presented disability as a site of creativity, improvisation, and shared knowledge. This contrasts with the idea of disability as something to be corrected. I returned to the prosthetics and self-modified objects because they felt grounded in lived experience. These objects showed adaptation and care, rather than ideals of perfection or repair.

Access was built into the exhibition from the beginning. A QR code linked to access information on the Victoria and Albert Museum website and included an audio descriptive guide for key objects and moments. Staff were available to assist visitors throughout. The exhibition began with a welcome and rest space, letting visitors orient themselves or address access needs before entering. This area featured artwork by Finnegan Shannon: a bench painted with the words “I need more time, rest here if you need to,” and a sensory map. These elements made access central to the space’s structure and experience.

The gallery still relied heavily on sight for orientation and navigation, despite access tools such as tactile maps and sensory guides. While the exhibition questions ocular norms, the practical layout still assumes sighted visitors as the majority audience. This exemplifies the broader argument: efforts to represent disability as culture often falter when access is not fully integrated, exposing a gap between intention and practice. This is in sharp contrast to how Extant embeds sensory navigation from the beginning.

Through Extant’s work, I have become more aware of how navigation, orientation and movement through space can shape an audience’s experience of a work from the outset, rather than being treated as an additional access consideration. Blindness is not treated as something missing or as a metaphor. It shapes the work itself. In works such as Flight Paths, a multimedia production inspired by blind female performers of medieval Japan, sound, orientation, proximity and audience navigation become part of the performance structure itself rather than secondary access tools. In the reinterpreted online experience, audience members are guided through space, becoming aware of distance, pacing and movement. Vision is not treated as the default way of understanding the work. Instead, meaning is produced through sound and navigation. The main character self-describes straight away, and subtitles and audio description are embedded from the outset.

Extant’s work made me rethink ideas in my research on memory, embodiment, and sensory experience. Shared navigation, audio description, touch, and spatial cues increase audience awareness of movement and space. Access shapes the meaning of the work from the beginning, not as an afterthought. This made me reconsider disability and diaspora, since both often exist at the margins of institutional history. They rely on memory and lived experience when official records are partial or missing. This partial visibility matters when considering whose knowledge is recognised, preserved, and shared. Here, the experience itself becomes an archive.

The V&A’s exhibition tries to celebrate disability as more than something to be fixed but ultimately reinforces visual conventions. My experience highlights the need for cultural spaces to fully embrace multisensory engagement and prioritise disabled people’s knowledge for genuinely inclusive experiences.

These questions followed me to Beyond the Visual at the Henry Moore Institute. There, access guides the curatorial method, showing what is possible. Access is integrated throughout, challenging the dominance of sight in sculpture. Yet hidden or hard-to-find access tools raise a point: if access is not fully integrated, can it truly be central?

A central concept in the exhibition was tactility. It was more than just an aspect of the space. Smooth and rough surfaces changed how visitors experienced the works. Touch became a primary and legitimate way to engage with sculpture. Some sculptures were made for blind audiences, not simply adapted later. This stressed that access was part of both creation and appreciation—not a secondary concern.

As I moved through the space, I reflected on Extant’s broader approach: movement, orientation, sound, touch, and proximity are treated as vital ways of accessing art, shaping space and experience – not just additions to a visual encounter.

Ken Wilder’s Pendulum made me much more aware of my own body in relation to the space. Its scale, movement, and colours made me notice my proximity and pacing. The physical closeness forced me to pay attention to how I moved around the work itself. I couldn’t remain a distant observer; the sculpture demanded interaction through movement, orientation, and bodily awareness.

I moved through the space quickly at first, then slowed and revisited works. I listened to the audio descriptions many times. The space encouraged non-linear engagement and different paces of attention. Gallery seating supported lingering and revisiting. This ties to crip time and alternative tempos of access.

Exhibition labels and audio guides deepened my understanding, while QR code access expanded the experience. Audio description influenced how I moved through and perceived the space, aligning with Extant’s approach, in which access is integral to shaping atmosphere and audience movement. This underscored for me how access shapes encounters with art and space.

On my first visit, I did not notice the audio-described film room. It was tucked away in a seminar room in the basement, found only through the exhibition guide. Returning the next day confirmed its importance, but highlighted my main question: when access exists but is unclear or not integrated, is it truly central or still peripheral? This shows that, for real inclusion, access must shift from supplemental to foundational in cultural spaces.

A main tension in the exhibition was between its challenge to visual norms and the museum’s traditional structure. Although the exhibition moved beyond sight-focused viewing, some access features felt hidden or easy to miss. It showed the gap between access being available and access being truly part of the experience. So, the exhibition was both a strong example of multisensory curation and a reminder that institutions still shape how art is experienced.

The exhibition left me with key ideas. Blindness is not a barrier to making or experiencing art. Access can shape the work itself. Tactile, embodied engagement can shift how sculpture is experienced and understood.

Reflecting on both exhibitions and Extant’s approach, I left thinking that access must be built into cultural spaces from the beginning rather than added afterwards. It’s not just about challenging visual ways of experiencing art, but about creating spaces that work through sound, touch, movement and different sensory experiences from the outset. Disabled knowledge and lived experience need to shape how work is made, curated and experienced. For me, that’s where real inclusion starts – not as an intention, but as something actively embedded into the structure of the experience itself.

Aisling Keavey, Thinker-In Residence, May 2026