A new perspective on thinking; how a blind person is able to utilise technology, tools and strategy to overcome design barriers in his world.

I asked my friend Hussein Patwa to write this post after he talked me through his process for building a wardrobe from IKEA whilst being blind! Hussein is an accessibility consultant and on the panel of Scotland’s Mobility Access Committee.

He provides me often with a unique perspective on the world which helps me think differently and grow as a designer. Hopefully it will help you too!

Enjoy the post!

To this day I still get funny looks when I mention the words ‘blind’ and ‘shooting’ in the same sentence. It comes whenever I mention one of my hobbies, air rifle shooting. But as with many things related to disability, it can be done, and I do.

I’m Hussein Patwa and I’m 35 years old. I’m a self-employed accessibility consultant, self-certified tech geek and after a year of lockdowns (and most likely beforehand) probably a little nuts too. Scratch that, a lot. I’m registered blind and also suffer from chronic pain. The blindness is a challenge to be overcome, and the pain is a fiery, devastating, ever-present, and most definitely unwanted companion. I’ve done many things in my life; played the piano, toured Myanmar and built my computer from scratch to name but a few, but all of these gratefully received help at some point along the way. Some things simply can’t be done due to physical limitations; lifting something that is just too heavy, balancing on an unstable platform without someone to hold it steady, or in my case, seeing and understanding pictures and diagrams.

So, when last year I decided to build my own flatpack wardrobe from scratch without any help, it was a cut above the rest. People have asked me how I did it without injuring myself (or the house) and so I decided to detail the process I followed in the hope it will inspire others to try something new or to persevere with something they thought was impossible.

As with any well-run project, the first thing to do was to see what I had to work with