{"id":4043,"date":"2025-01-08T10:00:15","date_gmt":"2025-01-08T09:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/?p=4043"},"modified":"2024-12-06T10:59:10","modified_gmt":"2024-12-06T09:59:10","slug":"4043","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/2025\/01\/08\/4043\/","title":{"rendered":"Deaf-led Alarm Design: Technology and Disability in Home, Work and Parenthood"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Article Summary by Gretchen Von Koenig<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Security alarms, alarm clocks, baby monitors and fire alarms are everyday devices in our homes that help us wake up, feel secure and care for our families. In the history of alarm designs that are dominated by auditory-based alerting systems, stories of how alarms were hacked for deaf needs tell a story about how deaf families refuse to be left behind when mainstream products fail them. This essay uncovers one of those episodes: the story of deaf, mid-century inventor Emerson Romero and his company <em>Vibralarm<\/em>. Romero\u2019s work is a disability history about design for-and-by deaf people and tells a longer history of vibrational alerting systems long before they became mainstream in our current everyday alarm devices: smart phones. The history of his alarm design and his company\u2019s operations speaks to deeper histories about how community can drive technological innovation, challenging conventional understandings of technological development being driven by large institutions or free market capitalism.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3>Read the full article on <a href=\"https:\/\/mh.bmj.com\/content\/early\/2024\/12\/02\/medhum-2024-013029\"><strong>the <em>Medical Humanities<\/em> journal website<\/strong><\/a>.<\/h3>\n<p><!--TrendMD v2.4.8--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Article Summary by Gretchen Von Koenig Security alarms, alarm clocks, baby monitors and fire alarms are everyday devices in our homes that help us wake up, feel secure and care for our families. In the history of alarm designs that are dominated by auditory-based alerting systems, stories of how alarms were hacked for deaf needs [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/2025\/01\/08\/4043\/\">Read More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":345,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15028,15047],"tags":[15044],"class_list":["post-4043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal-announcements","category-special-issues","tag-research"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Deaf-led Alarm Design: Technology and Disability in Home, Work and Parenthood - Medical Humanities<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Gretchen Von Koenig considers the story of the deaf inventor Emerson Romero and his company Vibralarm, which developed vibrational alarm devices for the deaf.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-humanities\/?p=4043\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Deaf-led Alarm Design: Technology and Disability in Home, Work and Parenthood - 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