Making Accessible Futures

Sounds like this was an awesome workshop!

George Williams, one of the workshop organizers and author of the chapter “Disability, Universal Design, and the Digital Humanities” in Debates in the Digital Humanities (2012), offered the example of the curb cut, which, as he says in his chapter, was designed to facilitate wheelchair users crossing the street, but “became recognized as useful also to other people such as someone making a delivery with a dolly, a traveler pulling luggage on wheels, a parent pushing a child in a stroller, or a person walking beside their bicycle.” Williams urged us to recognize the broad benefits of accessible design, while also raising questions about the “universal” in universal design.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Everyone has special needs and not all of them revolve around disabilities.

There will be another Accessible Futures workshop this Fall. If you have the opportunity, you should go.