Marissa Cummings is a research fellow at the University of Glasgow’s Digital Health & Care Innovation Centre. Although she and I were first introduced to each other through our mutual interest in our shared home country of Taiwan, I quickly realized that her work in accessibility and health care was also of deep interest to me: Her pinned tweet reads, “Why do we even need to say things like ‘inclusive design’ or ‘accessible design’? That should be the default. Force people to say the opposite and be honest about what they’re doing. Exclusive design. Inaccessible design.”
Cummings is precise in her communication, and her current work centers around what she calls “health stories.” We met to talk about the importance of storytelling for folks who are chronically ill or disabled.
The Writer: Tell me a little bit about the work the Digital Health & Care Innovation Centre does.
We’re funded by Scottish governments, and it’s a collaboration between Glasgow School of Art and another Scottish university, which is Strathclyde. We work with partner organizations to kind of help them investigate things or to improve their systems and services. It’s all about understanding how we can use digital tools and digital systems to improve health care and trying to
