The "Disability Dongle": Why Silicon Valley Hates Me and you.

Mood: Wanting to throw a $30,000 prototype into a lake. There is a feel-good genre of viral video that I call "The Inspiration Porn Industrial Complex." You know the one. It usually features a college engineering team, a dramatic piano soundtrack, and a disabled person strapped into a machine that looks like a Transformer having a panic attack. The caption usually reads: “Students invent stair-climbing wheelchair! The future is here!” I can't roll my eyes hard enough every time I see one of these vapid videos. The machine—let’s call it the iClimb 3000—usually costs as much as a Honda Civic. It weighs three hundred pounds. It makes a sound like a blender digesting a brick. And watching the video, all I can feel is the phantom sensation of being strapped into that thing, suspended five feet in the air at a forty-five-degree angle, praying the gyroscope doesn't glitch and toss me down a flight of concrete steps like a sack of potatoes. This is what we call a "Disability Dongle." A…