Join us for this Disability Studies Brown Bag Doubleheader! These talks will be showcasing disability studies research from technology design to graphic novels.

Friday, January 25, 2019, 12:00-1:30 pm Mary Gates Hall 024 (the UW D Center)

Titles:

• 12:00-12:45 pm, Cynthia Bennett will present on “Informing Technology Design Practice with Disability Scholarship and Activism”

• 12:45-1:30 pm, E.T. Russian will present on “Robots, Paper Cities, and Stage Plays: Disability, Deafness & Chronic Illness in Brian Selznick's Graphic Novels”

Presenters:

Cynthia Bennett is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of Human Centered Design and Engineering at the University of Washington. Her dissertation research aims to increase the participation of people with disabilities in technology design fields. Specifically, she foregrounds disabled people as designers and innovators and demonstrates that disability scholarship and activism meaningfully inform how we communicate and do design. Cynthia has also worked on several research projects on making existing technologies more accessible and on leveraging technologies to increase information access by people with disabilities. You can follow her on Twitter @clb5590 and read more from her website at www.bennettc.com.

E.T. RUSSIAN is a multi-sensory artist from the Pacific Northwest, author of The Ring of Fire Anthology, Co-Director of the documentary Third Antenna, and currently is in the traveling national exhibit Graphic Medicine: Ill-conceived and Well drawn, curated but Ellen Forney. E.T. has received support from the Art Matters foundation, Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, the Jack Straw Foundation, and the University of Washington Harlan Hahn Award.

Cynthia Bennett, “Informing Technology Design Practice with Disability Scholarship and Activism”

Abstract: This talk will overview two projects which translate and apply concepts from disability studies to technology design research. The first project offers interdependence as it has been developed by disability scholars and activists as a generative lens for assistive technology research and design. Interdependence is first offered to critique some limits of an independence focus, a predominant frame taken up in current assistive technology research and design frequently applied toward increasing autonomy. Interdependence will then be rearticulated into four tenets relevant for the field. Specifically, the tenets guide researchers and designers to center disabled people as agents in building access through mutually reliant relationships. The second project applies disability studies and feminist theorizing to popular empathy-building activities employed during technology design projects. Empathizing has become a common first step of technology design projects aimed at helping designers to understand their users so they may be better equipped to subsequently design for them. Empathy-building around disability comprises some activities which have been critiqued outside the field of technology design including simulating disabilities and generalizing disability characteristics for distribution to designers. This project demonstrates the shortcomings of such empathy building which may increase distance between nondisabled designers and disabled users, the opposite of the intent of these activities which is to draw designers nearer to the experiences of people with disabilities. The talk will end by offering empathy as a reciprocal process rather than an activity or achievement to push back on the common but often tacit assumptions that the people designing assistive technologies are necessarily different from the people using them

E.T. Russian, “ROBOTS, PAPER CITIES, AND STAGE PLAYS: DISABILITY, DEAFNESS & CHRONIC ILLNESS IN BRIAN SELZNICK'S GRAPHIC NOVELS”

Abstract: This talk will include a report back from the 2018 international Comics and Medicine conference, as well as a talk on the works of Brian Selznick. Brian Selznick is the illustrator and author of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, The Marvels and Wonderstruck. Rethinking Schools magazine recognized Selznick as being the only Caldecott Award-winning author to avoid common stereotypes in his characters with disabilities. Selznick's books read like silent movies. His black and white illustrations create intricate worlds of wonder, danger and intrigue with characters and settings that draw you in and hold you close. He does not advertise his books as exploring themes of blindness, disability and illness - yet a recurring theme of sickness and impairment exists in his work. Selznick sets an example on writing well-developed characters with illness. He manages to avoid the pitfall of tokenizing his characters, a trap too common in literature.

ACCESSIBILITY INFORMATION:

CART captioning and ASL interpretation have been requested for this event. The D Center (MGH 024) is mobility aid accessible and is a scent-free space.

We gratefully acknowledge the partnership of the D Center in providing space and staffing for these events.


Contact info: Joanne Woiak, jwoiak@uw.edu