{"id":108,"date":"2012-06-29T17:48:51","date_gmt":"2012-06-29T17:48:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/berkmancentersummer2012\/?p=108"},"modified":"2012-07-12T20:00:36","modified_gmt":"2012-07-12T20:00:36","slug":"108","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/berkmancentersummer2012\/2012\/06\/29\/108\/","title":{"rendered":"Rosemarie Garland-Thompson speaks about accessible technologies at the Berkman Center"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Rosemarie begins her talk at the Berkman Center. (Credit to Dino Sossi)<\/p><\/div>\n

By Royze Adolfo\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

This week, crowds filled the Berkman conference room to hear Prof. Rosemarie Garland-Thompson<\/a> from Emory University share her expertise on critical disability theory and insights on accessible technologies that increase opportunities for inclusion for people with disabilities.<\/p>\n

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Crowds gather for Rosemarie’s talk (Credit to Dino Sossi)<\/p><\/div>\n

Many of the Berkterns who attended today\u2019s luncheon claimed to be fascinated by Rosemarie\u2019s ideas, the transformation of disability discourse over the centuries, and countless modern day examples because they required us to look at life, people, history, art, and the notion of possibility through a different lens.<\/p>\n

Rosemarie began her talk by sharing the history of stigmatized disabilities discourse. She drew from classical artistic examples including Pieter Brueghel\u2019s painting The Cripples and pop culture examples including: Glee\u2019s inclusion of characters with disabilities; Lady Gaga\u2019s incorporation of disability drag in her Paparazzi music video; and actual examples of authors, athletes, photographers, dancers, models, and celebrities with disabilities making great strides. But art and media aren\u2019t the only areas where the disability landscape has been transformed.<\/p>\n

Buildings and alternative spaces are constantly transforming, too. Many architects, today, are solution-oriented designers who provide equitable, flexible, simple, and intuitive technologies and structures that increase quality of living for all. During her talk, Rosemarie illustrated the increasing thoughtfulness of architects in developing elegant \u201chuman-centered\u201d and \u201cbarrier-free\u201d designs of buildings, drinking fountains, ramps, door knobs, wheelchairs, sanitation stations, and transportation systems. Furthermore, more engineers are exploring and developing more innovative solutions and functional technologies (e.g. wheelchairs, crutches, touch screens, prosthetics, etc.) to build a more inclusive world.<\/p>\n

Today, various technologies from crutches to ramps to \u201chipster hearing-aides\u201d [hyperlink to example] make it more possible for people with disabilities to be included in \u00a0public spaces, to openly disclose their disabilities, and gives those without disabilities an opportunity to explore alternative forms of beauty as opposed to eliminating them. As we all pursue our own technology-related research Rosemarie\u2019s talk injects some highly valuable insight on the importance of designing for all.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Royze Adolfo\u00a0 This week, crowds filled the Berkman conference room to hear Prof. Rosemarie Garland-Thompson from Emory University share her expertise on critical disability theory and insights on accessible technologies that increase opportunities for inclusion for people with disabilities. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4637,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/berkmancentersummer2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/berkmancentersummer2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/berkmancentersummer2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/berkmancentersummer2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4637"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/berkmancentersummer2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/berkmancentersummer2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":172,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/berkmancentersummer2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions\/172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/berkmancentersummer2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/berkmancentersummer2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/berkmancentersummer2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}