2015 marks the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and there are a number of efforts underway to publicly acknowledge that milestone: its importance and its still-needed work in making meaningfully inclusive institutions and structures. Alice Wong is running the Disability Visibility Project as one of those efforts. The year-long project is a collaboration with … Continue reading →

  Poking around online for a good interview with Natalie Jeremijenko, I came across her unusual deployment of the term “unintended consequences,” which is so often associated with negative byproducts. As ever, Jeremijenko alerts us to opportunities: Jeremijenko: As a rule of thumb, we should think of technology as a profoundly conservative social source. By definition, it … Continue reading →

I’ve been thinking about the studio/lab/workshop environment I want to foster at Olin. So herewith a manifesto, or a set of guiding principles, for young engineers and designers working critically, reflexively, in technology design and disability. 1. We use the terms “adaptive” and “assistive” technologies interchangeably when speaking casually or with newcomers to this field, but we … Continue reading →

Next Thursday and Friday, August 14 and 15, I’ll be back in Toronto with Interaccess and the Inclusive Design Research Centre, to give a lecture and run a workshop and panel based on my ongoing project, Slope : Intercept. All of it is free and open to the public, held at 49 McCaul Street, so … Continue reading →

  Facebook’s experimentation with its users’ feeds was a big story this summer. And last week, tech writer Tim Carmody pointed to the curiously less-scandalous news that online dating site OKCupid has done the same thing with its data. Early last week, as a guest writer for Kottke, Carmody considered the differences between the two platforms … Continue reading →

I’ve been following the work of the School for Poetic Computation, for some time now. What an irresistible name! And one of its founders, Jen Lowe, wrote this absolutely beautiful essay last fall about its origins and rationale: Experiments with computation are restricted by marketing demands, by defense support, by the pressures of grant funding. … Continue reading →

I read through some of the series of essays that set up the original mission of Abler, and I was struck again by the so-much-with-so-little that’s packed into this paragraph by Mitchell Whitelaw. It has staying power for describing the investigative or experimental or highly situated practices that can proceed from the arts, but also … Continue reading →