The Institute on Disabilities at Temple University features a new 2008 - 2009 lecture series, The Geo-Politics of Disability. Our lecture in September, by Robert McRuer, was a great success. Our speaker this month will be Sumi Colligan, Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.
"Conceiving Social Justice: Disability Rights Discourse and Practice in an Israeli Setting": Professor Colligan examines ways in which national ideology, a climate of militarism, the penetration of neoliberalism, and the global circulation of human rights discourses shape and constrain contemporary conceptions, strategies, and struggles.
Date and Time: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, from 12 noon to 1:30 pm
Location: 1810 Conference Room, 1810 Liacouras Walk
On Temple University's Main Campus, Philadelphia, PA
For information and accommodations, contact:
Brian Zimmerman
Tel: 215-204-1356 • brian.zimmerman@temple.edu
Speaker Bio: Sumi E. Colligan is a professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, a four-year public institution in the Berkshires. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley and her doctorate from Princeton University, both in cultural anthropology. She also holds a Masters in Public Health from UC Berkeley. She participated in an NEH Summer Institute on the "New Disability Studies" in 2000 at San Francisco State University and the DAAD (German Academic Exchange) Summer Seminar on "Disability Studies and the Legacy of Eugenics" in Potsdam, Germany in 2004. She served on the Board of the Society for Disability Studies from 2002-05 and remains an active member. She has published several articles on disability, including "Global Inequities and Disability" in The Encyclopedia of Disability, "Why the Intersexed Shouldn't Be Fixed: Insights from Queer Theory and Disability Studies" in Gendering Disability, and "The Ethnographer's Body as Text and Context: Revisiting and Revisioning the Body through Anthropology and Disability Studies" in Disability Studies Quarterly. She is currently serving on the Editorial Board of Disability Studies Quarterly and has just completed co-editing a special issue entitled "The State of Disability in Israel/Palestine" with Liat Ben-Moshe. She is presently engaged in interviewing disability rights activists in Israel in order to explore their understandings of social justice.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Disability Blog Carnival #47 is up now!
[Visual description: 18th century man facing right, standing with a cane and a wooden peg leg; words "disability blog carnival" superimposed in red]Day al-Mohamed has the latest edition of the Disability Blog Carnival at Day in Washington, where the theme is "Policy." Government policy, sure, but also airline policy, statements from advocacy groups, voters' guides to candidates' policy stands, and much much more. Go have a read.
Next edition will appear at Barriers, Bridges and Books, where Terri has set the theme as "Capabilities and Capacities." What can you do, what do you know, what have you learned, because of your experience with disability? "Little things and big things," Terri encourages. Submit your links via all the usual means--at the blogcarnival.com form (warning: inaccessible CAPTCHA included), in comments here or at BBandB, or just put the phrase "Disability Blog Carnival" in the text of your post, I usually find those too.
Thursday, October 09, 2008
Simi Linton on disability and architecture
More on the subject; one of my local reading groups is discussing Simi Linton's My Body Politic next month, so I happened to run across this passage just after writing yesterday's post. Linton is describing the steps at Columbia University:
My earlier body had been trained to walk such steps and my eyes to appreciate their grandeur. I grew up thinking, although I'm sure I never said it out loud, that steps are either a pragmatic solution, a means to connect spaces of different heights, or they are an aesthetic element, added onto a design because it makes the building more beautiful. But now, with their function lost to me, their beauty began to fade, and I saw something I hadn't noted before--attitude. Steps, and particularly these steps at Columbia, seemed arrogant. The big buildings sitting up on top said, "The worthy can climb up to me, I will not kneel down and open my doors to those below me."... The design of steps forbids the wheelchair user, and the designer of these steps, deliberately or unwittingly, provided us only a solitary and difficult route to get where those steps took all others. (p. 57)
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
A Milestone for Tar Heel Reader
It's not the biggest library in the world, but it's one of the very coolest. Tar Heel Reader is
Recently, Tar Heel Reader passed 1000 books in its ever-growing archive. About 5% of those, I wrote. I was never able to track back and figure out where I first heard of Tar Heel Reader--on a blog or news feed, no doubt, but which? But I remembered Karen Erickson from my own UNC days (we were doctoral students at the same time in the School of Education), and I knew that she did cool work, so I joined the effort very early on. I wrote several of the first twenty books in June, and I keep adding one or two a week. They're a joy to construct, an excellent challenge, to make interesting books within the limits of the form. My topics have ranged around, from food and clothing and color themes, to books about voting, the first amendment, gargoyles, calligraphy, Shakespeare, the solar system, mirrors, and drag racing. I'm still working on making a story--I've made a few attempts so far, but I'm not a fiction writer and it shows.
If you know a beginning reader who would enjoy accessible picture books on such a range of subjects, send them to Tar Heel Reader. In just their first twenty weeks they've had visits from over 12,000 computers worldwide. It's that cool, and it's getting better every day.
a collection of free, easy-to-read, and accessible books on a wide range of topics. Each book can be speech enabled and accessed using multiple interfaces (i.e. switches, alternative keyboards, touch screens, and dedicated AAC devices). The books may be downloaded as slide shows in PowerPoint, Impress, or Flash format.according to the welcome page. The idea is to provide new readers of all ages with appropriate, interesting, accessible content--because new readers who are 12, 17, 23, or 41 don't necessarily want to read about puppies and kitties, right? Students and teachers and parents can also create books for the site, using the wealth of Flickr images or their own uploads. Tar Heel Reader is a collaborative creation of the Center for Literacy and Disability Studies and the Department of Computer Science at UNC-Chapel Hill (thus the name).
Recently, Tar Heel Reader passed 1000 books in its ever-growing archive. About 5% of those, I wrote. I was never able to track back and figure out where I first heard of Tar Heel Reader--on a blog or news feed, no doubt, but which? But I remembered Karen Erickson from my own UNC days (we were doctoral students at the same time in the School of Education), and I knew that she did cool work, so I joined the effort very early on. I wrote several of the first twenty books in June, and I keep adding one or two a week. They're a joy to construct, an excellent challenge, to make interesting books within the limits of the form. My topics have ranged around, from food and clothing and color themes, to books about voting, the first amendment, gargoyles, calligraphy, Shakespeare, the solar system, mirrors, and drag racing. I'm still working on making a story--I've made a few attempts so far, but I'm not a fiction writer and it shows.
If you know a beginning reader who would enjoy accessible picture books on such a range of subjects, send them to Tar Heel Reader. In just their first twenty weeks they've had visits from over 12,000 computers worldwide. It's that cool, and it's getting better every day.
Who Belongs Where
Dirksen Bauman posted a link to this Washington Post feature story on the DS-Hum listserv--seemed like something worth sharing here, where geographers are thick on the ground.
The plans for Gallaudet's campus extension include interior and exterior spaces designed for visual communication--what does that mean? Among other features, they envision classrooms large enough for meetings to be conducted in a circle, rather than in rows of front-facing desks; choosing wall treatments and colors that won't distract or complicate ASL communications; ramped walkways (not just for wheeled access, but to allow better flow of signed conversations), curved and mirrored exterior walls that allow better visual warning of approaching cross-traffic than right-angled sidewalks and buildings.
The article is a reminder that the thoughtful design supports people across a wide array of disability categories. While the space needs of wheelchair users are perhaps most quickly noticed (if not always met appropriately or creatively), there are interesting, practical ways to configure buildings and outdoor environments for better use by people with sensory, cognitive, linguistic, neurological and psychological differences as well. And it's not about "special accommodations," it's about considering, from the start of any project, our preconceptions about who belongs where.
Good recent blog on related topics: David Gissen on "heroic architecture" (h/t to Jesse the K and Badgerbag for the link).
The plans for Gallaudet's campus extension include interior and exterior spaces designed for visual communication--what does that mean? Among other features, they envision classrooms large enough for meetings to be conducted in a circle, rather than in rows of front-facing desks; choosing wall treatments and colors that won't distract or complicate ASL communications; ramped walkways (not just for wheeled access, but to allow better flow of signed conversations), curved and mirrored exterior walls that allow better visual warning of approaching cross-traffic than right-angled sidewalks and buildings.
The article is a reminder that the thoughtful design supports people across a wide array of disability categories. While the space needs of wheelchair users are perhaps most quickly noticed (if not always met appropriately or creatively), there are interesting, practical ways to configure buildings and outdoor environments for better use by people with sensory, cognitive, linguistic, neurological and psychological differences as well. And it's not about "special accommodations," it's about considering, from the start of any project, our preconceptions about who belongs where.
Good recent blog on related topics: David Gissen on "heroic architecture" (h/t to Jesse the K and Badgerbag for the link).
Wednesday, October 01, 2008
October 1: Margaret Blackwood McGrath (1924-1994)
[Visual description: Margaret Blackwood, seated at a desk, in a blue checked vest and white blouse, in front of a shelf of books.]"I spoke to more MPs. I shouted at them at their election meetings. 'You haven’t mentioned the disabled! Are we a dirty word?' I broadcast on the radio and on TV. I wrote to every newspaper I’d heard of. The time was ripe. Hundreds of people were getting in touch with me. When at school, I had been so timid I used to tremble when I read at prayers and begged to be excused. Now there was no stopping me. I was passionate."
The founder of Scotland's Disablement Income Group (DIG-Scotland), Margaret Blackwood was born on this date in 1924, in Dundee. She was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy in her early teens, with discouraging prospects. She finished school in 1943, but found few job opportunities. "I sank into despair," she recalled.
When she was in her early 40s, she learned about the DIG founded by and for disabled people in Surrey in 1965. Soon Blackwood began a similar effort in Scotland, and, as she describes in the quote above, became a "warrior in a wheelchair." In 1978 she married fellow disability rights activist Charles McGrath, while he was in an intensive care unit. Charles died two weeks later.
Today, the Margaret Blackwood Housing Association, based in Dundee and named in her honor, manages accessible and affordable housing for disabled tenants all over Scotland.
[Thanks again to Iain Hutchison for giving me the delicious Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women, where I first learned of Margaret Blackwood McGrath.]
UN Press release on Koreans with Disabilitiesy
29 September 2008 Press Release No. G/46/2008
UN and Korea team up to improve access to technology for people with
disabilities
Workshop in Incheon target policy-makers from six Asian countries
Bangkok (UN/ESCAP Information Services) -- The regional arm of the United
Nations in Asia and the Pacific has teamed up with the government of the
Republic of Korea to improve access to information and communication
technology (ICT) for persons with disabilities by offering training to
policy-makers from developing countries in the region.
Government representatives of Cambodia, Indonesia, Mongolia, the
Philippines, Sri Lanka and Viet Nam are attending a regional workshop which
opened today (29 September) in Incheon, Korea. They are joined by ICT
accessibility experts from the International Telecommunication Union,
Germany, the USA, Japan, Thailand, and the Republic of Korea.
The four-day workshop was organized by the United Nations Economic and
Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and its subsidiary, the
Asian and Pacific Training Centre for Information and Communication
Technology for Development (APCICT), in conjunction with the Korea Agency
for Digital Opportunity and Promotion (KADO).
Asia and the Pacific is home to approximately 400 million people living
with disabilities. Using a computer keyboard or being able to see
information on the Internet - things that others take for granted - could
be a huge challenge to many of them.
"The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities,
which entered into force in May this year, emphasizes among other things
the importance of the accessibility to ICT," Ms. Thelma Kay, Director of
ESCAP's Social Development Division, told the workshop at its opening.
"Improving ICT accessibility can involve anything, from designing
government web sites to work seamlessly with software to assist the
visually impaired, to making sure specialized equipment to facilitate
access is affordable," said Ms. Hyeun-Suk Rhee, Director of ACPICT.
The four-day workshop will discuss the ICT accessibility guidelines for
persons with disabilities, especially women and children, drafted by ESCAP
and KADO and will take feedback and suggestions for its improvement and
localisation to be better applied in participating countries. It will also
share good practices in the provision of ICT accessibility to persons with
disabilities.
The goal of the workshop is to adopt the guidelines and agree to develop
implementation strategies in the countries represented.
APCICT will also deliver its own flagship training programme the 'Academy
of ICT Essentials for Government Leaders: ICT Project Management in Theory
and Practices', designed to better equip policy-makers for ICT project
management.
For more information, please contact:
Mr. Jeongkee Hong
Expert on Disability
Social Development Division, ESCAP
Mr. Dongchul Kim
Expert on ICT
Information and Communication Technology and Disaster Risk Reduction
Division, ESCAP
Jill Hanass-Hancock
Post-Doc fellow
Heath Economics & HIV/AIDS Research Division (HEARD)
University of KwaZulu-Natal
Westville Campus, J-Block, Level 4
Durban 4041
South Africa
UN and Korea team up to improve access to technology for people with
disabilities
Workshop in Incheon target policy-makers from six Asian countries
Bangkok (UN/ESCAP Information Services) -- The regional arm of the United
Nations in Asia and the Pacific has teamed up with the government of the
Republic of Korea to improve access to information and communication
technology (ICT) for persons with disabilities by offering training to
policy-makers from developing countries in the region.
Government representatives of Cambodia, Indonesia, Mongolia, the
Philippines, Sri Lanka and Viet Nam are attending a regional workshop which
opened today (29 September) in Incheon, Korea. They are joined by ICT
accessibility experts from the International Telecommunication Union,
Germany, the USA, Japan, Thailand, and the Republic of Korea.
The four-day workshop was organized by the United Nations Economic and
Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and its subsidiary, the
Asian and Pacific Training Centre for Information and Communication
Technology for Development (APCICT), in conjunction with the Korea Agency
for Digital Opportunity and Promotion (KADO).
Asia and the Pacific is home to approximately 400 million people living
with disabilities. Using a computer keyboard or being able to see
information on the Internet - things that others take for granted - could
be a huge challenge to many of them.
"The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities,
which entered into force in May this year, emphasizes among other things
the importance of the accessibility to ICT," Ms. Thelma Kay, Director of
ESCAP's Social Development Division, told the workshop at its opening.
"Improving ICT accessibility can involve anything, from designing
government web sites to work seamlessly with software to assist the
visually impaired, to making sure specialized equipment to facilitate
access is affordable," said Ms. Hyeun-Suk Rhee, Director of ACPICT.
The four-day workshop will discuss the ICT accessibility guidelines for
persons with disabilities, especially women and children, drafted by ESCAP
and KADO and will take feedback and suggestions for its improvement and
localisation to be better applied in participating countries. It will also
share good practices in the provision of ICT accessibility to persons with
disabilities.
The goal of the workshop is to adopt the guidelines and agree to develop
implementation strategies in the countries represented.
APCICT will also deliver its own flagship training programme the 'Academy
of ICT Essentials for Government Leaders: ICT Project Management in Theory
and Practices', designed to better equip policy-makers for ICT project
management.
For more information, please contact:
Mr. Jeongkee Hong
Expert on Disability
Social Development Division, ESCAP
Mr. Dongchul Kim
Expert on ICT
Information and Communication Technology and Disaster Risk Reduction
Division, ESCAP
Jill Hanass-Hancock
Post-Doc fellow
Heath Economics & HIV/AIDS Research Division (HEARD)
University of KwaZulu-Natal
Westville Campus, J-Block, Level 4
Durban 4041
South Africa
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