This course examines the topic of design and human impairment through a range of historical case-studies and contemporary theoretical debates. We will understand how the modern concept of “disability” is deeply entangled with the history and practice of modern design. In many ways, disability has been and remains an identity defined through design practice and disciplines. For example, we will examine the manner in which many design disciplines became professionalized as they addressed forms of disease and public health in the early 20th century. We will also explore the ways that modern and late-modern theories of functionalism gained prominence as they advanced an exceedingly narrow concept of human-ness embedded into everyday spaces and artifacts. We will see how blind, deaf, and de-mobilized people responded to this by demanding increased “access” to a world in which virtually everything is designed. These latter demands have defined, if not over-defined, activism by impaired people in the United States. Finally, we will examine the potential transformation of design disciplines via the increased presence of disabled designers. Here, we will imagine a final provocation and that responds to this course’s thesis: How can disabled people liberate themselves from being the objects of design theory and take on other identities outside their struggles with a designed world? **Students must register for both the lecture and discussion section of this course.** [This ULEC is in category 3, Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Arts and Humanities.]