E Pluribus Unum: Using Conceptual Metaphor Theory to Explore and Support Mixed-Ability Workplaces

Francesco Cafaro,Ulka Patil,Sowmya Chandra,Erin Brady,Abhijeet Saxena

doi:10.1145/3479528

Abstract

Even when they are able to secure employment, people with cognitive disabilities typically encounter significant difficulties in the workplace. In this paper, we focus on Mixed-Ability workplaces: work settings in which people without disabilities and with different types of disabilities collaborate on a daily basis. The case study for our exploratory research is a university library that has been able to support a mixed-ability work setting for over four years. We describe how a theory from cognitive linguistics (Conceptual Metaphor Theory) can be used to explore the challenges that people encounter in mixed-ability workplaces, identify the cognitive processes that differ between neurotypical team leaders and workers with cognitive disabilities, and translate these findings into design recommendations for embodied technologies that support mixed-ability workplaces.

Highlights

People with cognitive disabilities encounter significant difficulties in the workplace [1, 10], consistently reporting lower employment and pay than people without disabilities, and more part-time and low-wage employment [44]
The process moved to create affinity diagrams with additional notes that refer to user problems and needs. It ended with the creation of paper and functional prototypes that included design elements that the team deemed as based on the embodied schemata and metaphors that were identified during the design work [33]. This Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT)-based design approach is similar in concept with the work that we describe in this paper, it needs to be fundamentally altered to explore mixed-ability workplaces for three major reasons
Through the description of our fieldwork at a mixed-ability digitization lab at an Italian university library, we described how current approaches to collect data for CMT need to be adapted to integrate CSCW’s long history of embedded fieldwork and to incorporate techniques to establish trust and equal relationship with neurodiverse participants

Summary

Introduction

People with cognitive disabilities encounter significant difficulties in the workplace [1, 10], consistently reporting lower employment and pay than people without disabilities, and more part-time and low-wage employment [44]. Neurodiverse individuals may have different cognitive frames of reference or styles of thinking [16] While these differences historically may have been seen as deficits, they have unique "upsides" [5] –for example, people with Autism may have higher visuospatial skills than neurotypical people [57]. These alternative styles of thinking impact how neurodiverse and neurotypical individuals can collaborate or exchange ideas [8], and the perspectives of neurodiverse people are often ignored or misunderstood by neurotypical people [68]

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