In 2022, Disabled faculty and students are requesting accommodations to remain off campus or to limit in-person exposure through continued access to remote or hybrid delivery of instruction. Many universities are denying these requests by calling them “unreasonable burdens” to the institution or citing institutional business interests.
Remote and hybrid instruction is neither an unreasonable burden (as proved by our past few semesters), nor does it interfere with the essential functions of “the position” — instructing and learning. Join this webinar to discuss our book chapter contextualizing the Covid-19 pandemic’s effects on office-based and academic workspaces using a critical disability studies approach. After a brief presentation on the materials covered in the chapter, we will open for a discussion on how we want to emerge out of this chaos; what considerations do we want to continue; and what can we, as a community, point to as a best practice versus something that should be discarded and moved away from at the societal level?
Rua Mae Williams, Ph.D., received their doctorate in Human Centered Computing from the University of Florida in 2020. They are currently an Assistant Professor in the User Experience Design program of the Computer Graphics and Technology Department at Purdue University. They are a scholar of Critical Disability Studies and Science and Technology Studies, with publications in the Canadian Journal of Disability Studies and Techne, a Journal of Research in Philosophy and Technology. Their research explores interactions between technology design, research practices, and Disability Justice.
Martina Svyantek, PhD, completed an individualized, interdisciplinary doctorate from Virginia Tech. She served in the Accessible Technologies group at Virginia Tech for 3 years before starting as the assistive technology specialist at the University of Virginia in 2021. She has published in the International Journal of ePortfolio and the Journal of Engineering Education. Her research interests within critical disability studies focus on accessibility and institutional policy within higher education.