Events
Title: Anti-ableist Technology: A presentation followed by discussion with Dr. Jen Mankoff
Date/Location: 4/1/25, 316 C in 370 Jay and Zoom
Talk Recording
Abstract: Today, the civil right to accessibility is under attack. Even before this, many disabled people experienced barriers to access and prejudice. Technology is not neutral in this — from the wide array of freely available access tools the major technology firms have all invested in, to the prevalence of inaccessible apps and websites, to the data today’s generative AIs were trained on, technology reflects challenges to our civil rights such as prejudice, erasure, and exclusion. My talk asks how we can counter these trends, and highlights how a new generation of disabled users, researchers, and technologists are framing an accessible future in terms of independence, mutual responsibility, and intersectionality. I weave examples from AI throughout this story both because of its unique power in letting people define access in their own terms and because of the risks its use engenders.
Makers Making Change: Kitchen Sink Build
Date/Location: 2/16/25,316 C in 370 Jay
The NYC Chapter of Makers Making change hosted their Kitchen Sink Build where 20 volunteers got together and worked on putting together build kits of various low to high tech AT items that were added to the MMC lending library.
Accessible Art: Enhancing Art Accessibility through Visual Descriptions
This two-part workshop explored how visual descriptions can make fine art more accessible for People with Vision impairments and People with Intellectual disabilities. The pilot workshop at NYU, conducted with students, tested activities such as interpreting paintings through descriptions, card sorting, and naming artworks. Key takeaways included the need for clear, simple language, minimizing tasks to maintain engagement, and providing glossaries for complex terminology – like explaining well-known paintings such as Starry Night.
The HeartShare workshop built on these insights with Artists with Intellectual Disabilities, focusing on how they describe and engage with art. Participants recreated Starry Night based on descriptions, named and discussed paintings, and highlighted key descriptive elements such as mood, content, and color. The workshops demonstrated the importance of collaboration in making art more inclusive, informing a framework for developing effective visual descriptions.
Tidal Odessy: featuring FMDG School Laptop Orchestra “FiLOrk”
Nonvisual Soldering Workshop at ITP
Led by: Lauren Race
Date/Location: NYU ITP, 2/28/20 – 3/1/20, 370 Jay Street, New York, NY 11201
A weekend-long workshop—Friday, February 28 – Sunday, March 1, 2020—at NYU ITP offered students the opportunity to learn nonvisual soldering techniques from Dr. Joshua Miele: founder of the Blind Arduino Project, former Associate Director of the Smith-Kettlewell Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Low Vision and Blindness, and former Creative Director of LightHouse Labs. In addition to gaining hands-on experience with a soldering iron, students were guided in building their own accessible continuity tester—one of the most fundamental and flexible tools for electronics work without vision.
Tactile Design for Accessibility
Led by: Lauren Race
Date/Location: A11y NYC, 12/3/19, 1384 Broadway, New York, NY 10018
The goal of this workshop was to promote inclusive design and accessibility awareness by framing tactile design as a useful collaborative tool and use case, provide hands-on experience by inviting attendees to design and produce their own tactile designs using microcapsule paper and a fuser.
Designing Tactile Graphics for Accessible Media Products
Led by: Lauren Race
Date/Location: NYCML’19, 9/26/19 | frog, 8/22/19 | Hunter College, 8/9/19
This hands-on workshop shows the basics of designing tactile graphics for physical computing, with the goal of helping participants understand the latest best practices in producing accessible technologies for diverse user needs. First, this session highlights recent NYU Ability Project case studies to provide an overview of accessibility standards. Then, working in small groups, participants design their own tactile graphic using a state-of-the-art Swell Form Machine, a printing device that creates maps, diagrams, text and other tactile graphics to help revolutionize the production of media products for blind and low vision learners. Attendees can take home the graphic they produced, and are encouraged to share these accessible production methods and standards within their professional networks.
Assistive Technologies workshop at NYU Shanghai
Led by: Anita Perr and Marianne Petit
Date / Location: NYU Shanghai IMA Program, March, 2016
Using seed grant funding from the NYU Global Institute, Marianne Petit and Anita Perr organized and ran a 2-day assistive technology workshop at NYU Shanghai in March, 2016. Professors Petit and Perr are co-founding directors of the NYU Ability Project, along with Professor Dubois. At the time of this workshop, Professor Petit was the Director of the Interactive Media Arts (IMA) Program at NYU Shanghai and Professor Perr was teaching on NYU’s New York City Campus. Guest speakers, including faculty, clinicians, researchers, and technologists from the United States and Asia, talked about the current state of various assistive technologies. Presenters also participated in learning activities along with NYU Shanghai students and local stakeholders about topics such as technologies for people who are blind or have low vision, the use of artificial intelligence, virtual reality, exoskeletons, and advanced 3D printing prostheses. Focusing on the interactions between development, manufacture and use of assistive technologies, attendees also participated in workshops to problem solve and explore fabrication of assistive technology solutions. Since this workshop, NYU Ability Project collaborations have continued between on the New York City campus and IMA at NYU Shanghai.