Using persona to highlight disability, visible or otherwise – Animated Inclusive Personae (Part 3)

By Katie Stripe, Imperial College London.

This post is the third of a series based on the Animated Inclusive Personae (AIP) project which, at is heart, is about creating digital personae that genuinely represent the diversity of our students. The first post was about generating inclusive images and the second about the language that is used in the EDI space, both with more of a slant towards representing visible racial, and ethnic diversity. This post will focus on disabilities and how the personae we have created can be used to highlight areas of diversity that may be less visible such as neurodiversity or sexuality and gender identity. This post will also introduce you to some of the new artwork for the project and the growing bank of content that will accompany them.

Let me introduce you Callum (Artwork by Ekaterina Kirina). The eagle eyed of you may notice that he is wearing hearing aids. This is a small detail, but quite powerful if that is something that you are looking for in terms of representation for people ‘like you’. Callum also has a biography which gives details on the programme he is studying, he previous education and the motivations and frustrations that he encounters during the course of his studies. Some related to his hearing, some not.
These details run through all the AIP characters to enable us to tell stories about them and how the personal, the cultural, and the social interact with their studies and their plans for the future. Visible adaptations like Callum’s hearing aids can be shown, even in a subtle way but other health issues or things which may need adaptations cannot.

Tony (artwork by Ksenia Ivanova) is an undergraduate student who was diagnosed with Long Covid after suffering from the virus when he was still at school.

The majority of information about Tony is delivered through the Attributes and Aspirations programme where he acts as a ‘peer’ to the students taking the online course. His health condition is not highlighted overtly but it is used to help students new to Imperial discover what resources are available to them should they be in a similar situation. Tony is also linked to the Disability Advisory Service (DAS) where he offers students information on what they can expect from the service and how they can access what they need.

The idea behind these personae has always been subtlety of representation and this is almost more important for the areas of hidden diversity like Tony. Not only do they give representation to those with hidden conditions but they highlight these unseen differences and difficulties to a wider audience. They show that this diversity is normal and does not reflect at all on their studies or their ability to participate in academic or social life at university. This is perhaps more important for neurodiversity, which in many areas carries stigma and is often still approached with a deficit model. The final student I would like to introduce is Cat (artwork by Mingke Wang).

Cat is a postgraduate student who has always thought she might be dyslexic but since starting her master’s programme has begun to struggle. It is not uncommon for high achieving students with good coping mechanisms to run into struggles later in their academic careers. The AIP project has been able to use Cat in two ways. To both normalise neurodiversity and to help provide information. She is participating in the Imperial Award, which requires students to prepare a reflective portfolio. This award allows different types of submission and Cat is able to present her reflections via multimedia and explore some of the frustrations raised by her dyslexia but also, and importantly, allows her to explore areas where her dyslexia can be a benefit. Cat’s personae, the first of the cohort to be animated, is also being used by the disability advisory service to promote the work they do. However, one of the main benefits of the Cat personae is that she is not a real student and therefore she can advocate for the service, and for neurodiversity, in a way that captures elements of real student experience but without putting any real students under pressure to share their stories. This poses a different set of challenges relating to how students respond differently to lived experience stories vs those storied that are contrived by a project such as this, but that is a discussion for another post. Here the message is that subtlety of representation and the normalisation of difference is important to those who need to see themselves in the university but it is also important for others to see those characteristics being treated as part of the normal everyday diversity that is what makes our institutions unique and interesting.

References

Imperial College London (2024a) AA – Undergraduate, Imperial College London. Available at: www.imperial.ac.uk/students/attributes-and-aspirations/ug (Accessed: 13 September 2024).

Imperial College London (no date) Animated Inclusive Personae, Imperial College London. Available at: www.imperial.ac.uk/about/education/get-involved/funding-opportunities-for-learning-and-teaching-innovation/funded-projects-funding-opportunities-for-learning-and-teaching-innovation/personae.

Imperial College London (2024b) Callum MacNab (he/him), Imperial College London. Available at: www.imperial.ac.uk/about/education/get-involved/funding-opportunities-for-learning-and-teaching-innovation/funded-projects-funding-opportunities-for-learning-and-teaching-innovation/personae/animations/callum (Accessed: 13 September 2024).

Imperial College London (2024c) Katheryn Foxton (She/Her), Imperial College London. Available at: www.imperial.ac.uk/about/education/get-involved/funding-opportunities-for-learning-and-teaching-innovation/funded-projects-funding-opportunities-for-learning-and-teaching-innovation/personae/animations/cat (Accessed: 13 September 2024).

Imperial College London (2024d) Tony Chen, Imperial College London. Available at: www.imperial.ac.uk/about/education/get-involved/funding-opportunities-for-learning-and-teaching-innovation/funded-projects-funding-opportunities-for-learning-and-teaching-innovation/personae/animations/tony (Accessed: 13 September 2024).

Stripe, K. (2024a) Generating inclusive images to represent students – Animated Inclusive Personae (Part 1), #ALTC Blog. Available at: https://altc.alt.ac.uk/blog/2024/01/generating-inclusive-images-to-represent-students-animated-inclusive-personae-part-1.

Stripe, K. (2024b) We need to think about language – Animated Inclusive Personae (Part 2), #ALTC Blog. Available at: https://altc.alt.ac.uk/blog/2024/07/we-need-to-think-about-language-animated-inclusive-personae-part-2 (Accessed: 13 September 2024).

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