Lazar, J., Churchill, E. F., Grossman, T., Van der Veer, G., Palanque, P., Morris, J. S., & Mankoff, J. (2017). Making the field of computing more inclusive. Communications of the ACM, 60(3), 50-59.
More accessible conferences, digital resources, and ACM SIGs will lead to greater participation by more people with disabilities. Improving conference and online material accessibility has been an ongoing project that I’ve been lucky enough to help with. This effort, led by a wide set of people, is spearheaded currently by the SIGCHI Accessibility Community (also on facebook, summarized in a recent Interactions blog post.
Disability studies and assistive technology are two related fields
that have long shared common goals–understanding the
experience of disability and identifying and addressing relevant
issues. Despite these common goals, there are some important
differences in what professionals in these fields consider
problems, perhaps related to the lack of connection between the
fields. To help bridge this gap, we review some of the key
literature in disability studies. We present case studies of two
research projects in assistive technology and discuss how the
field of disability studies influenced that work, led us to identify
new or different problems relevant to the field of assistive
technology, and helped us to think in new ways about the
research process and its impact on the experiences of individuals
who live with disability. We also discuss how the field of
disability studies has influenced our teaching and highlight
some of the key publications and publication venues from which
our community may want to draw more deeply in the future.
