Making Space in the Makerspace: Building a Mixed-Ability Maker Culture

The Maker Movement, while heralded for popularizing DIY culture, has recently drawn some critiques for the ways in which the mass-marketing of maker culture partially obscures the social, cultural, and political implications of making. A number of educators, designers, and researchers are actively studying alternative approaches to maker culture, and specifically developing ways to broaden participation in DIY activities for socio-economically, racially, and ethnically diverse youth. To complement that initiative, this paper proposes the notion of a “mixed-ability maker culture” as one approach to realizing a more equitable, ethical, and sustainable culture of making that also encompasses youth with disabilities. As an illustration of how mixed-ability maker culture might shape interaction design for children with and without disabilities, this paper describes a modified formulation of Resnick and Silverman’s popular metaphorical approach to designing children’s creative thinking tools, and its application to DIY tools, activities, and pedagogy.