A WHEELCHAIR CAPE is a large, tent-like piece of waterproof clothing used by the wheelchair-bound to keep dry in the rain. A cross between a giant bib and a barber's smock, it's functional, but not much else. In some ways, says designer and researcher Graham Pullin, it further reinforces the disability of its wearer.

"It's certainly not streetwear," he says.

But what would happen if, say, an underground fashion company for bike messengers took on such a design? And what if the result not only lent some mainstream cool to the person using it, but sparked new ways of thinking about waterproof design and technology? Those unlikely marriages are the kind Pullin wants to inspire with his new book, "Design Meets Disability." Pullin, a lecturer in interactive media design at the University of Dundee in Scotland who trained as a medical engineer, makes a strong case that better design for disabled people could pay off in unexpected and important ways, not only for users but for society overall.

For too long, Pullin says, the medical and design worlds have been strangers, and Exhibit A for their potential together is undeniably compelling: The iconic, curved-wood furniture of American midcentury designers Charles and Ray Eames, which evolved directly from their design of a leg splint for wounded service members in WWII.

Since then, Pullin says, bold examples of design for disability have been too few and far between. His book highlights many that do exist, from watches that can be read by touch and vibration to a pair of gorgeously intricate, hand-carved wooden legs worn by fashion model and double amputee Aimee Mullins. As for possible implications for the wider world, well, there's the small matter of the iPod, whose designer, Jonathan Ive, started out as a young student making white plastic hearing aids for the deaf.

Other than wearing glasses Pullin is not disabled himself, and he doesn't claim to speak for the disabled. "The issues around disability are very political and complex and loaded, and I'm not trying to make any statements about disability per se," says Pullin. "The message I'm simply trying to get across is that by actually embracing disability, and the issues disability puts to the forefront, it can unlock ideas about universal design."

Pullin spoke to Ideas from his home in Scotland.

IDEAS: How did you get interested in bringing aesthetically-minded design to devices for disabilities?

PULLIN: I was designing a robot arm for people who had high spinal injuries. So, paralysis from the neck down . . . I became increasingly aware that what we were doing, apart from being clinically and technically demanding, was incredibly intimate and culturally sensitive, and emotionally sensitive. Because these very high-tech devices we were designing for people inevitably became extensions of them in the eyes of other people. So they really did change not only people's perception of the person using them, but also the person's self-perception as well. And yet, none of us had training in any of that stuff. I was sensitive enough to know those issues were there, but my own training was entirely technical. So I took myself off to the Royal College of Art . . . and I've been looking for ways of combining the two ever since, which hasn't always been easy.