Dear cool person, you're invited to an evening filled with some drinking and thinking!
In this month’s EMW Drink Salon on Tech & Ethics, we will explore the topic of DISABILITY.
Speakers: Dr. Meryl Alper, Lindsay Yazzolino & the Institute for Human Centered Design (Maggie Austen, Whitney Hill & Woodbury Shortridge)!
Community Curator: Tasha Chemel
There will of course be refreshing beverages and delicious snacks.
We'll have some light snacks and drinks (non-boozy) for you as well!
RSVP is required for entrance. All ages event.
Seating is limited to 60 guests.
In the disability community, there are debates around cure—should we accept ourselves as we are, or should we use technology to augment our senses and enhance our bodies?
Do the benefits of new, potentially life-changing technologies and treatments outweigh the risk that society will demand that we make use of them, so that we will become “normal"?
What is “normal” anyway, and how is technology causing this definition to shift, not just for those of us with disabilities, but for all people?
- Tasha Chemel, Community Curator
The EMW Drink Salon on Tech and Ethics brings together a community and a supportive space to spark challenging discussions on the role of technology in our everyday lives. Each month, we invite featured speakers to lead a conversation. We encourage salon guests to make new connections and to think critically about how technology relates to some of the most important questions we ask humanity.
Recent Drink Salons include:
#EMWDrinkSalon | @TechethicsDS
Scroll down for speaker/ organizer bios & a schedule for the night!
Community Curator
Writing Tutor at Newbury College and Suffolk University
Tasha Chemel is a teacher, a writer, and a tinkerer, with keen interests in philosophy, disability studies, and cognitive
neuroscience.
She holds a bachelor's degree in psychology from Brown university, an MSW from Boston College, and an Ed.M. from the Harvard
Graduate School of Education.
Currently, she tutors writing at Newbury
College and Suffolk University. Tasha has been totally blind since birth but has always been fascinated by the visual world.
In her spare time, she is researching the possibilities for developing a technology that would allow the congenitally blind to experience a sense akin to vision, if they so choose. She lives in Cambridge.
Maggie Austen, Whitney Hill
& Woodbury Shortridge
The Institute for Human Centered Design (IHCD), founded in Boston in 1978 as Adaptive Environments, is an international non-governmental educational organization (NGO) committed to advancing the role of design in expanding opportunity and enhancing experience for people of all ages and abilities through excellence in design. IHCD’s work balances expertise in legally required accessibility with promotion of best practices in human-centered or universal design.
The IHCD's Core Beliefs:
1) Design is powerful and profoundly influences our daily lives and our sense of confidence, comfort, and control.
2) Variation in human ability is ordinary, not special, and affects most of us for some part of our lives.
The IHCD is working with the UN on the implementation of the new Treaty on the Human Rights of Persons with Disabilities that endorses Universal Design as the basis for design guidelines.
Staff Assistant at Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority—Department of System-Wide Accessibility
Lindsay Yazzolino has pursued her interests in diverse areas which range from brains to trains, having worked both in cognitive neuroscience research and in the Massachusetts Bay Transportation
Authority’s Department of System-Wide Accessibility.
After completing her undergraduate degree in
cognitive science from Brown University, she has worked as a research assistant investigating how blindness influences the development of brain mechanisms underlying Braille reading, language, navigation, and other cognitive abilities.
A lifelong science enthusiast who has been totally blind since birth, Lindsay strives to bring together people with diverse perspectives—including individuals within the scientific and blind communities—so that they can inspire each other to think and innovate in creative new ways.
Assistant Professor of Communication Studies
at Northeastern University
Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard
Dr. Alper studies and teaches about the social implications of communication technologies, with a focus on youth and families, disability, and mobile media.
She is the author of Digital Youth with Disabilities (MIT Press, 2014) and Giving Voice: Mobile Communication, Disability, and Inequality (MIT Press, 2017).
Prior to joining the faculty at Northeastern, she earned her doctoral and master’s degrees from the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California.
Dr. Alper also holds a bachelor’s degree in Communication Studies and History from Northwestern University.
Twitter: @merylalper
Web site: merylalper.com
Speaker: Maggie Austen (Institute for Human Centered Design)
Talk Title: "Removing Barriers with Universal Design"
Talk Summary: Variation in human ability is ordinary, not special, and, affects most of us for some part of our lives; Universal design, including technology, has the power to remove disabling barriers and enhance everyone's lived experience.
Moderators: Tasha Chemel
Panelists:
- Dr. Meryl Alper (Northeastern Univ. & Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society)
- Lindsay Yazzolino (MBTA, Department of System-wide Accessibility)
- IHCD (Maggie Austen, Whitney Hill & Woodbury Shortridge)
Submit Questions Here: https://pad.riseup.net/p/DS-Panel-Disability
MBTA: The library is close to the Central Square T Station—for directions, go to the link here.
Located at the Pearl St. and Franklin St.
Ramp access entrance on Franklin Street. We will have volunteers available if people need assistance getting into the venue.
Free street parking is available but typically difficult to find after 6PM on Fridays. Visitors can pay for parking in Central Square, or take the T.
/// ACCESSIBILITY ///
All Cambridge Public Library facilities are handicapped accessible and welcome service animals. Please come fragrance free! For the health and safety of organizers, panelists, and other attendees, we ask you not to wear scented products or clothing that has recently been smoked in. For more information: http://www.peggymunson.com/mcs/fragrancefree.html
