{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,13]],"date-time":"2026-09-13T03:33:14Z","timestamp":1789270394254,"version":"build-2803163510"},"reference-count":36,"publisher":"BMJ","issue":"4","content-domain":{"domain":["bmj.com"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Med Humanities"],"accepted":{"date-parts":[[2024,10,15]]},"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2024,12]]},"abstract":"<jats:p>Domestic alarms are highly personal technological appendages that help us achieve an individual sense of safety and familial well-being\u2014like baby monitors that help us care for children and alarm clocks that ensure a daily routine and help us get to work on time. Alarms can be understood as technologies that extend our eyes, ears, and memory to monitor our homes and ourselves in various ways beyond typical human capacity. The designs of domestic alarms tend to favour audible forms of alerting, and disabled users and inventors have hacked and redesigned alarms to fit their own families\u2019 needs. Alarm design can tell us what type of domestic futures designers and technologists have imagined, casting visions about who is fit for parenthood and who is a reliable worker, and what types of futures disabled users imagined for themselves. As the future of these technologies becomes subsumed into smartphones and other IoT devices, a look into their predigital material forms uncovers episodes of disability agencies that assert a right to disability futures of domestic bliss and safety. Through the archives of The Deaf American and other deaf community publications, this research reviews the postwar alarm designs of Emerson Romero, a Cuban-American deaf activist and engineer, to show how deaf-led alarm designs are forms of material rhetoric that assert a right to a domestic future for disabled parents and workers.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1136\/medhum-2024-013029","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2024,12,2]],"date-time":"2024-12-02T13:15:42Z","timestamp":1733145342000},"page":"639-647","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1136\/crossmarkpolicy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":2,"title":["Deaf-led alarm design: technology and disability in home, work and parenthood"],"prefix":"10.1136","volume":"50","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0008-2722-2152","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Gretchen","family":"Von Koenig","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"History of Capitalism, Technology and Culture, University of Delaware College of Arts & Sciences, Jersey City, New Jersey, USA"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"239","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2024,12,2]]},"reference":[{"key":"2026022701400699000_50.4.639.1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Costanza-Chock S . 2020. Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need. Information Policy. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.","DOI":"10.7551\/mitpress\/12255.001.0001"},{"issue":"10337","key":"2026022701400699000_50.4.639.2","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"1772","DOI":"10.1016\/S0140-6736(22)00781-4","article-title":"\u201cImagining Technologies for Disability Futures.\u201d","volume":"399","author":"DeFalco","year":"2022","journal-title":"The Lancet"},{"key":"2026022701400699000_50.4.639.3","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Dokumaci A . 2023. Activist Affordances: How Disabled People Improvise More Habitable Worlds. Durham: Duke University Press.","DOI":"10.1353\/book.111153"},{"key":"2026022701400699000_50.4.639.4","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Ellcessor E . 2016. Restricted Access: Media, Disability, and the Politics of Participation. New York: New York University Press.","DOI":"10.18574\/nyu\/9781479867431.001.0001"},{"key":"2026022701400699000_50.4.639.5","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Ellcessor E . 2022. In Case of Emergency: How Technologies Mediate Crisis and Normalize Inequality. New York: New York University Press.","DOI":"10.18574\/nyu\/9781479811625.001.0001"},{"key":"2026022701400699000_50.4.639.6","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Fallon C. K. F . 2020. \u201cWalking Cane Style and Medicalized Mobility.\u201d In Making Disability Modern Design Histories, edited by Williamson B. and Guffey E. , 1st ed. London [England]: Bloomsbury Visual Arts.","DOI":"10.5040\/9781350070462.ch-002"},{"key":"2026022701400699000_50.4.639.7","unstructured":"Gallaudet University Archives . n.d. \u201cThe Silent Worker Collection 1948-1966.\u201d Available from: https:\/\/gallaudet.edu\/archives\/archives-collections\/the-silent-worker-collection"},{"key":"2026022701400699000_50.4.639.8","unstructured":"Gissen D . 2022. The Architecture of Disability: Buildings, Cities, and Landscapes Beyond Access. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press."},{"key":"2026022701400699000_50.4.639.9","unstructured":"Grier K . 1997. Culture & Comfort: People, Parlors and Upholstery, 1850-1930. Smithsonian Books."},{"key":"2026022701400699000_50.4.639.10","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Guffey E . 2020a. \u201cDesigning the Japanese Walking Bag.\u201d In Making Disability Modern Design Histories, edited by Williamson B. and Guffey E. , 1st ed., 159\u201376. London [England]: Bloomsbury Visual Arts.","DOI":"10.5040\/9781350070462.ch-009"},{"key":"2026022701400699000_50.4.639.11","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Guffey E . 2020b. \u201cThe Ideologies of Designing for Disability.\u201d In Making Disability Modern Design Histories, edited by Williamson B and Guffey E , 1st. London [England]: Bloomsbury Visual Arts.","DOI":"10.5040\/9781350070462.ch-00I"},{"key":"2026022701400699000_50.4.639.12","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Guffey E. E . 2018. Designing Disability: Symbols, Space, and Society. London New York: Bloomsbury.","DOI":"10.5040\/9781350004245"},{"key":"2026022701400699000_50.4.639.13","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Hamraie A . 2017. Building Access: Universal Design and the Politics of Disability. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.","DOI":"10.5749\/minnesota\/9781517901639.001.0001"},{"issue":"1","key":"2026022701400699000_50.4.639.14","first-page":"1","article-title":"\u201cCrip Technoscience Manifesto.\u201d","volume":"5","author":"Hamraie","year":"2019","journal-title":"Catalyst"},{"key":"2026022701400699000_50.4.639.15","unstructured":"Hayer M. R . 1968. \u201cService for Sleepyheads: The Story of Vibralarm.\u201d The Volta Review. Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing"},{"key":"2026022701400699000_50.4.639.16","unstructured":"Hendren S . 2020. What Can a Body Do? How We Meet the Built World. First Hardcover. New York: Riverhead Books."},{"key":"2026022701400699000_50.4.639.17","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Jones C. L. , ed. 2017. \u201cRethinking Modern Prostheses in Anglo-American Commodity Cultures, 1820-1939. Disability History.\u201d Manchester: Manchester University Press.","DOI":"10.7228\/manchester\/9781526101426.001.0001"},{"key":"2026022701400699000_50.4.639.18","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Kafer A . 2013. Feminist, Queer, Crip. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press.","DOI":"10.2979\/6841.0"},{"key":"2026022701400699000_50.4.639.19","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Lieffers C . 2020. \u201cArtificial Limbs on the Panama Canal.\u201d In In Making Disability Modern Design Histories, edited by Williamson B. and Guffey E. , 1st ed. London [England]: Bloomsbury Visual Arts.","DOI":"10.5040\/9781350070462.ch-003"},{"key":"2026022701400699000_50.4.639.20","unstructured":"Nielsen K. E . 2014. \u201cCHAPTER 15 Property, Disability, and the Making of the Incompetent Citizen in the United States, 1860s\u20131940s.\u201d In Disability Histories, edited by Burch S. and Rembis M. A. . Urbana Chicago Springfield: University of Illinois Press."},{"key":"2026022701400699000_50.4.639.21","unstructured":"Noguchi I . n.d. Radio Nurse. The Metropolitan Museum of Art."},{"key":"2026022701400699000_50.4.639.22","unstructured":"Ott K. , Serlin D. , and Mihm S. . 2002. \u201cThe Sum of Its Parts: An Introduction to Modern Histories of Prosthetics.\u201d In Artificial Parts, Practical Lives: Modern Histories of Prosthetics, edited by Ott K. . New York: New York University Press."},{"key":"2026022701400699000_50.4.639.23","unstructured":"Oudshoorn N. , and Pinch T. J. , eds. 2005. How Users Matter: The Co-Construction of Users and Technology. Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England: First MIT Press paperback edition. Inside Technology. MIT Press."},{"key":"2026022701400699000_50.4.639.24","unstructured":"Parr J . 1999. Domestic Goods: The Material, the Moral, and the Economic in the Postwar Years. Toronto\u202f; Buffalo\u202f; London: University of Toronto Press."},{"key":"2026022701400699000_50.4.639.25","unstructured":"Pullin G . 2009. Design Meets Disability. Cambridge, Mass. London: MIT."},{"key":"2026022701400699000_50.4.639.26","unstructured":"Romero D . 1965. \u201cThat\u2019s My Pop.\u201d The Deaf American. National Association of the Deaf"},{"key":"2026022701400699000_50.4.639.27","unstructured":"Romero E . 1951. \u201cNational Film Library For the Deaf.\u201d The Silent Worker. National Association of the Deaf"},{"key":"2026022701400699000_50.4.639.28","unstructured":"Rosenholtz E. , and Strum R. B. . 1972. \u201cThe Definitive Biography of a Much-Beloved Man: Emerson Romero: Man of a Thousand Lives.\u201d The Deaf American. National Assocaition for the Deaf"},{"key":"2026022701400699000_50.4.639.29","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Rose S. F . 2017. No Right to Be Idle: The Invention of Disability, 1840s-1930s. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.","DOI":"10.5149\/northcarolina\/9781469624891.001.0001"},{"key":"2026022701400699000_50.4.639.30","unstructured":"The British Deaf Times . 1932. \u201cAdvertisement for \u2018A Novel Fire Alarm.\u201d British Deaf Association"},{"key":"2026022701400699000_50.4.639.31","unstructured":"The British Deaf Times . 1936. \u201cAdvertisement for \u2018The Sordoviso Silent Bell System.\u2019\u201d British Deaf Association"},{"key":"2026022701400699000_50.4.639.32","unstructured":"Virdi J . 2020a. \u201cDeaf History Series: Episode 11 Emerson Romero. Blog. Deaf History Series (Blog).\u201d Available from: https:\/\/jaivirdi.com\/2020\/07\/19\/dhs-episode-11"},{"key":"2026022701400699000_50.4.639.33","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Virdi J . 2020b. Hearing Happiness: Deafness Cures in History. Chicago. London: University of Chicago Press.","DOI":"10.7208\/chicago\/9780226690759.001.0001"},{"key":"2026022701400699000_50.4.639.34","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Williamson B . 2019. Accessible America: A History of Disability and Design. New York City: NYU Press.","DOI":"10.18574\/nyu\/9781479855582.001.0001"},{"key":"2026022701400699000_50.4.639.35","unstructured":"Williamson B. , and Guffey E. . 2020. Making Disability Modern Design Histories. 1st ed. London [England]: Bloomsbury Visual Arts."},{"key":"2026022701400699000_50.4.639.36","unstructured":"Zenith Corporation . 1938. Instructions for \u2018Zenith Radio Nurse\u2019 Baby Monitor. The Henry Ford Museum Collection."}],"container-title":["Medical Humanities"],"original-title":[],"language":"en","link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/syndication.highwire.org\/content\/doi\/10.1136\/medhum-2024-013029","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2026,2,27]],"date-time":"2026-02-27T09:41:19Z","timestamp":1772185279000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/mh.bmj.com\/lookup\/doi\/10.1136\/medhum-2024-013029"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2024,12]]},"references-count":36,"journal-issue":{"issue":"4","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,1,2]]},"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2024,12]]}},"alternative-id":["10.1136\/medhum-2024-013029"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1136\/medhum-2024-013029","relation":{},"ISSN":["1468-215X","1473-4265"],"issn-type":[{"value":"1468-215X","type":"print"},{"value":"1473-4265","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2024,12]]}}}