Enabled By Design is a clever (and attractive) website that aims to put the people using assistive equipment in touch with designers that might be looking for inspiration.
As well as a main blog to highlight topics of interest, there are Loves and Hates sections where people can give their opinions on gadgets and gizmos that are perfect, pretty or helpful and conversely ugly, badly designed or inappropriate for use. There’s an Ideas section too where a designer could find the inspiration they need to create an assistive tool for someone who has the idea but no means to implement it.
This kind of exchange is exactly what we should be seeing in a world full of disposable crap. Clever modern design can be elegant and useful, and who better to tell a budding designer what is helpful than people who rely on certain tools for their independence.
The website seems to have picked up various plaudits for innovation, but is still not that heavily populated. It would be great to see more people using it and following the brains behind the site on Twitter, which is where I first came across it.
Surely in this world of a social network for everything, a simple exchange of good ideas will be the catalyst for something great?