Customization!
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Roc Morin, The Atlantic - January 15, 2014
"With these prostheses, Sophie enables her customers to conceal their absences and blend in. But the artist also caters to another kind of clientele: amputees wanting to stand out.”
There is definitely something important about disabled people who think to “trick out” their adaptive gear … their prosthetic limbs, their crutches, their braces, their wheelchairs. After visiting dozens of websites and blogs per day for over a year, I get the sense that it’s mostly people who would be into tattoos and brightly dyed hair whether they were disabled or not. What I really wonder is whether it works at all to encourage people new to disability to think about personalizing their stuff. This could be adults who become disabled and are in the early to mid rehabilitation process, or kids and teenagers with visible disabilities who might be agonizing over the stigma of being different. Customizing adaptive equipment can be a tremendously liberating thing, giving people a way to embrace their disability and make it a coherent part of who they are … not some foreign addition at odds with their self-perception.