Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability - Longmore Lecture

Alice Wong Longmore Lecture with Video & Transcript: "Storytelling as Activism: The Politics of Disability Visibility"

Visitor — Mon, 16 Apr 2018 22:29:39 +0000

On April 3, 2018, we celebrated the fifth annual Longmore Lecture in Disability Studies with Alice Wong, founder/director of the Disability Visibility Project and co-partner of #CriptheVote. Interviewed by Longmore Institute Director Catherine Kudlick, Wong explored disability justice, savvy strategies for social media, intersectionality, and political engagement through storytelling. Wong, normally the interviewer herself in her work, opened up, "“As a person born with a disability, I’ve always been an activist, just by existing in a nondisabled world! I was an accidental activist. I was timid calling myself an activist with a capital A...” Fortunately, at the end of the lecture, she shared, "This was a much more pleasurable experience than I thought it'd be!" Missed this great event or joined us but are eager to take it again? Read the recap of all the live tweets on Wakelet here, access the transcript here, and watch the video now!(Includes ASL & captioning): [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPwH6UTjeKE]

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Good News: You Can View the Longmore Lecture with Alice Wong Remotely!

Visitor — Fri, 23 Mar 2018 22:59:27 +0000

Join us! The 2018 Annual Paul K. Longmore Lecture on Disability Studies will feature an interview with Alice Wong on "Storytelling as Activism: The Politics of Disability Visibility."
Tuesday, April 3, 2018 - 5:00pm-7:00pm (includes reception)
San Francisco State University, J. Paul Leonard Library, Room 121

You won't want to miss this chance to learn more about Alice Wong, Founder/Director of the Disability Visibility Project and co-partner of #CriptheVote. Together we will explore disability justice, savvy strategies for social media, intersectionality, and political engagement through storytelling. This event is free and open to the public, and light refreshments will be served. RSVP encouraged to pklinst@sfsu.edu or (415) 405-3528. Please refrain from wearing scented products, so that people with chemical sensitivities can join us. ASL and open captioning will be provided.

CAN'T JOIN US IN PERSON

BUT DON'T WANT TO MISS OUT ON THE FUN?

We're excited to announce that for the first time, we'll be streaming the Longmore Lecture! Register now: https://sfsu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_tZ6NrhItShCA5VhCKTcRQw After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the stream. We recommend you download Zoom in advance if the platform is new to you. Please note, if you are blind and use a screen reader, we recommend that you use the dial-in information to access the live-stream audio rather than the zoom computer link, as it may not play nicely with your screen reader unfortunately. (US: +1 669 900 6833 or +1 646 558 8656 Webinar ID: 761 651 225) If you are Deaf or hard of hearing, please press the CC button once you open the Zoom platform to access the live captioning stream. And feel free to tweet your thoughts/questions with #LongmoreLecture / @LongmoreInst / @DisVisibility

*** This year's Longmore Lecture was made possible thanks to several donors who gave in honor of Nicole Bohn's many years of service to San Francisco State University.

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Mia Mingus Longmore Lecture Video Now Available!

Visitor — Thu, 25 May 2017 20:16:33 +0000

By the Longmore Institute Staff

Each year, the Longmore Lecture in Disability Studies hosts a speaker who continues Paul Longmore's legacy of scholar-activism.

On April 11, 2017, we were pleased to welcome Mia Mingus who presented on "Access Intimacy, Interdependence, and Disability Justice" and the importance of making connections and building relationships with those who understand, help meet, and make efforts to achieve your access needs.

Thank you to San Francisco State University's academic technology for capturing this video!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONpqOHGIbZM

For the transcript, please click here for it on Mia's blog.

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An Interview with Mia Mingus: 2017 Longmore Lecturer

Visitor — Thu, 26 Jan 2017 19:45:54 +0000

In anticipation of the upcoming Longmore Lecture in Disability Studies, Associate Director Emily Beitiks interviewed this year's speaker, Mia Mingus, who will present on "Access Intimacy, Interdependence, and Disability Justice" and the importance of making connections and building relationships with those who understand, help meet, and make efforts to achieve disabled people's access needs. Mingus is a community organizer and national social justice leader, a queer, physically disabled, Korean, transracial woman and transnational adoptee.

The Longmore Lecture will be held Tuesday, February 7th in the J. Paul Leonard Library (SFSU campus), room 121, from 5-7pm; for more information, see the event page here and please rsvp by January 27! Emily Beitiks: You'll be talking about "Access Intimacy, Interdependence, and Disability Justice" at the Longmore Lecture. Why are you choosing to focus on this topic?

Mia Mingus: I am choosing to focus on these because I think they are a crucial part of disability justice that we will need if disabled people will ever be free. I chose these because I notice how they have a huge impact on my daily life. As I wrote in "Feeling the Weight: Some Beginning Notes on Disability, Access and Love,""These are the parts of disability justice and liberation that keep me up at night, that have hurt more than any ableist remark, that have left more scars than any surgery. This is the underbelly of ableism. This is what I fear we will be left to wrestle with after every building is made accessible and every important policy is passed." These are the pieces of disability justice that often get overlooked and undervalued.

EB: The goal of the annual Longmore Lecture is to feature a speaker who continues Paul Longmore's legacy of scholar-activism. How do you feel about us giving you that label? Does that resonate with your approach?

MM: I don't think of myself as a scholar, though I appreciate that folks would think of me that way. Really, I just started writing the writing I was looking and longing for and couldn't find. I wrote to save my own life in a way and in doing so, ended up finding others like me and helped to forward a framework that continues to grow today. I wrote to leave evidence for others like me who were also looking and longing for an approach to disability that was not single-issue and that was...for lack of a better word--human. I wanted writing on disability that didn't just speak to the facts or statistics or policy, but that spoke to the whole experience of disability: the messiness, the pride, the isolation, the invisibility, the pity, the love, the struggle and the magnificence. I wanted writing that could make me feel, not just think.

EB: We lined you up for this lecture months ago. Now, we are seeing a dramatically different political climate and your work will be more valuable than ever. What impact has this had on the way you approach your work, if any?

MM: Much of my work has been building alternatives, specifically building transformative justice responses to violence within our own communities. This work is vital to our past, current and future political realities because if we don't build alternatives at the same time we are resisting, then we are only resisting--hamsters on a permanent wheel. It is not sustainable and building alternatives helps us actually build the world we long for, rather than only just rejecting the world we don't want. And I want to be clear that both resistance and alternatives are absolutely important and are deeply connected, yet distinct from one another--and they are also not mutually exclusive. If this current political climate teaches us anything, even in just the first handful of days under this new administration, it is that we need to build alternatives to our current systems because it has been made abundantly clear that they are not made for us, by us and in many cases, are actively working to erase us. I think about this for disability and how we will build alternatives to institutionalization and incarceration, since this is where so many disabled people are. What will it take for us to build the kind of communities, relationships and world where disabled people do not have to be so dependent on or ensnarled by the state or the medical industrial complex? I want us to not only focus on things like the ACA--critically important work--or specific policies and budget cuts, but to also use this moment to really think about where we want to go as a people and what we're fighting for and building, not only what we're resisting and fighting against. If anything this current political climate has deepened my commitment and determination to my work and the role it plays in supporting all the amazing and inspiring mass-resistance and direct actions we have been witnessing.

EB: What have you read or who have you met recently that you're really excited about?

MM: Lately, I have been struggling just to keep up with the never-ending cycle of news and work every day.

EB: We work with a lot of students on campus who have disabilities. What do you wish you'd known when you were in their position?

MM: Wish I had known that there was a vibrant network of queer disabled people of color out there. I wish I had known that, no matter what anyone tells you, disability and ableism are important political pieces to the work of liberation. That ableism, though often overlooked, is a key part of how oppression--all oppression--functions and that our experiences as disabled people are valuable and unequivocally political. It means something to be disabled. And I wish I hadn't wasted so much time waiting for someone else to create the thing I needed, when I know now that we can and must create what we need with what we have. We are the ones we have been waiting for.

Learn more from Mia on Tuesday, Feb 7. Visit the event page now!

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Missed Joshua Miele's Talk at the Longmore Lecture?: Watch it here!

Visitor — Fri, 18 Mar 2016 18:21:51 +0000

The Annual Longmore Lecture in Disability Studies presents Dr. Josh Miele:
"How Access Really Happens: Disability, Technology, and Design Thinking”

March 2, 2016

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtKf45Oc_8A]

Click here to read a guest post by Joshua Miele on our blog.

Josh Miele Bio:

Dr. Miele is a scientist with over 25 years of experience in developing innovative, information-accessibility solutions for blind people. He has a bachelors degree in physics and a Ph.D. in psychoacoustics from the University of California at Berkeley. As Director of the Description Research and Innovation Lab (DRIL), and Associate Director of the Smith-Kettlewell Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Blindness and Low Vision, he leads a team of engineers and scientists dedicated to addressing a wide variety of accessible information challenges in education, employment, and entertainment. His leadership of the DRIL (Formerly the Video Description Research and Development Center) energetically integrates accessibility engineering, education research, psychophysics, disability studies, and other disciplines, applying description technologies and techniques to a universe of information accessibility challenges.

Outside of his professional work at Smith-Kettlewell, Dr. Miele is an active member of the Bay Area’s vibrant disability community. He is a former board member of both the Bay area Outreach and Recreation Program (BORP), and the Ed Roberts Campus (ERC). He is the Immediate Past President of the board of the San Francisco LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired, and is cofounder and Creative Director of LightHouse Labs — a Bay Area think tank which promotes tightening ties between technology innovators and the blind community.

Dr. Miele is the inventor of the Descriptive Video Exchange (DVX), YouDescribe, WearaBraille, Tactile Maps Automated Production (TMAP), the Talking Tactile Pen (TTP), Sonification tools for MATLAB, Virtual Talking Signs, Simulated Sighted Stranger (SSS), and a number of other tools and diversions for blind consumers. He has also made contributions to screen reader technology, computer-vision applications for the blind, haptic exploration research, and disability humor. Dr. Miele lives in Berkeley, California, the City of the Blind.

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"How Access Really Happens": The 2016 Longmore Lecture

Visitor — Tue, 08 Mar 2016 00:31:02 +0000

"Real access happens not by asking for permission but by asking for forgiveness after you have done what you need to do" ~Dr. Joshua Miele, 2016 Longmore Lecture guest speaker

By: The Longmore Institute

At this year's annual Longmore Lecture on Wednesday, March 2, we heard from scientist and inventor Joshua Miele, who discussed his take on "how access really happens." Dr. Miele holds a Ph.D. in psychoacoustics from the University of California, Berkeley, and is currently Director of the Description Research and Innovation Lab (DRIL) and Associate Director of the Smith-Kettlewell Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Blindness and Low Vision. As noted in an earlier post, Miele has spent nearly 30 years "designing and implementing a wide variety of tools intended to give blind people better access to the information they need to do the things they want to do."

But this talk wasn't about the latest accessible technology. Rather, Miele began by reminding all of us that "disability, accessibility, equality and self-determination connects back with the history and culture of disability." His reigning mantra, which is echoed as a core tenant of the Longmore Institute, is that disability can spark creativity and innovation, and rather than letting everyone else figure out the best way to solve problems for "those people," innovation comes best straight from the source. Dr. Miele shares some musings on the pros and cons of powerpoint presentations for blind speakers.

Miele noted that "there is a big difference between independence and self-determination." He recalled his own journey both professionally and personally on how he was able to progress from adapting, to being in a position to help others. As a physics student, Miele relied on another low-vision scientist Abraham Nemeth's braille code for math and science formulas, along with his own additions. And with ever-increasing access to technologies and ideas, his work continues to figure out "how blind people can build the things that they need to build."

One of his most compelling stories was of a childhood memory in a museum. He recalls his mother describing a display of airplanes, then waiting for a security guard to look away so that he could go under the rope and touch the planes himself as she identified them. Although he wasn't directly suggesting going beyond the ropes in museums (though many museums actually offer touch tours for low-vision visitors now!), he illustrated the point that "Real access happens not by asking for permission but by asking for forgiveness after you have done what you need to do." This year's lecture was informative and entertaining, but also a call to arms to advocate for the access we really need. By working with expert innovators like Miele, we can make access really happen. Missed the lecture? Watch it here!

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Blind Eye for the Sighted Guy

Visitor — Mon, 29 Feb 2016 23:07:02 +0000

In this shared blog post, Dr. Joshua Miele, who will deliver this year's annual Longmore lecture, looks at stories behind the disability expertise we seek to celebrate at the Institute. His desire to innovate comes as a creative impulse for sure. But his efforts also arise from the need for true dialog between disabled and nondisabled innovators. Swirling in here are genuine impulses to help. Yet too much effort goes into imagining what *those people* might want or need rather than considering how we might all benefit by looking to the work of someone like Miele.

-Director Catherine Kudlick, Paul K. Longmore Institute on Disability

The following blog is cross-posted from http://bit.ly/JAMBE4SG

By: Joshue Miele

For almost thirty years, I’ve been designing and implementing a wide variety of tools intended to give blind people better access to the information they need to do the things they want to do. Information accessibility is one of the most significant barriers facing blind people. From printed text and graphics to interactive point-and-click interfaces, information is almost always represented visually, and it is almost always the primary thing a blind person needs to negotiate in order to achieve his or her desired ends.

I don’t do this out of the kindness of my heart or for the money — I do it because I have to, and because I need the job done right. I’m a blind scientist who has had to do a lot of his own informational negotiation over the years, and I know from experience that the quality of one’s accessibility tools has a direct impact on the quality of one’s life.

I didn’t set out to be an accessible technology researcher. At first I thought I’d be some kind of physicist, but in the course of my studies I found myself having to put almost as much effort into developing my own tools and techniques for accessing information as into my studies themselves. I realized that good access tools needed to be designed by someone who truly understood how and why they would be used. I’m sure this is some kind of ancient product design wisdom that’s taken for granted in most mainstream product development efforts. However, in the case of products for blind people it is frequently abbreviated or overlooked entirely. Many sighted inventors of accessibility tools unconsciously substitute a combination of mythology, prejudice, and pity for market research. They come up with an idea that they think would be useful for blind people and leap into development mode, often without consulting even one informed blind consumer.

No one is more familiar with this phenomenon than Bill Gerrey. An engineer at The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute where I have worked in one capacity or another for over ten years, he is one of my most valued blind mentors. In his more than four decades at S-K, he has developed all kinds of accessible tools for electrical engineering, wayfinding, mobility, home maintenance and repair, ham radio and more. He has been a subject and collaborator in practically every accessibility experiment ever done at Smith-Kettlewell. For years he was the founder and Editor in Chief of a ground-breaking DIY Electronics magazine for blind people, and remains the irreverent and unvarnished (except where it suits him to be otherwise) institutional memory of the organization. He loves gadgets, the older the better. Both his home and lab are warehouses for equipment that was manufactured and thrown away more than seventy years ago, was lovingly rescued shortly thereafter, and which has been piled up awaiting its hour of need for decades. He has cylinder players, army field telephones, vibrotactile stimulators, oscilloscopes, and microwave ovens stashed in every imaginable location. Any of these could get swept up into Bill’s next prototype.

Bill is famous in a modest way. He has been featured in many newspaper and magazine articles, and has appeared on TV, radio, and podcasts. Sometimes it’s for projects he has been involved with; other times, people write about him simply because he’s interesting and fun to talk to. I’m pretty sure that his secret to success is that reporters simply like chatting with him. He’s a font of history, opinion, old jokes, wisdom, and irritability — mostly in good measure.

I started at S-K as a summer intern while getting my Ph.D. at Berkeley. I was in awe of Bill Gerrey — a living legend in the blind community. They squeezed me into his electronics lab by piling the stacks of plastic project boxes and ancient shortwave radio chassiss even higher to yield a few square feet of bench space for my computer and keyboard. My perch was right outside the door to Bill’s inner office so he had lots of opportunity to mentor me.

The biggest benefit of sitting there was that I got to listen to all of Bill’s phone calls. Because he conducted so much of his business on the phone, I was educated in all sorts of unanticipated aspects of accessibility engineering research. I learned the business from the inside out, so to speak. While the sausage of the accessibility world is nothing compared to politics, I did confront some distasteful truths that summer.

In particular, I noted a recurring type of disturbing phone conversation. Once or twice a week Bill would field a call from a complete stranger sent by one of his adoring connections, or possibly self-propelled through sheer doggedness or religion. It would start with Bill calmly, if tiredly, saying something like, “That’s interesting, but blind people don’t really need that,” or “Actually, that already exists,” or “Have you talked to any blind people about this?” The conversation would generally turn into a long discussion about the fundamentals of Braille reading, how screen readers work, cane technique, or some other incredibly basic aspect of the routine conduct of blind life.

It turns out that there is a type of person — usually a retired sighted guy — who has invented something that’s going to really help blind people. Unfortunately, guys like this don’t usually know any blind people, and they don’t generally have any idea what needs doing in the blind world, technologically or otherwise. They seem to be inspired mostly by pity, which is a powerful motivator, but poor preparation for addressing real problems. They are reasonably well-meaning, but they generally show little interest in learning anything about the field or doing any kind of market research. You see, they’ve already invented the thing that blind people need, and they just need a little help — usually with obtaining funding — to get it into the hands of the needy blind.

One guy had invented a special telephone that would call 911 if you gave it a hard bump or knocked it off the table. He was convinced that it would be perfect for blind people because if you needed help you could just… knock it off the table. I guess he thought blind people couldn’t dial 911. Or maybe he just figured we were really good at knocking things off tables. Either way, Bill had a hell of a time convincing him that it was not only a thing that blind people didn’t need, but would also constitute a serious problem for responders in the event of an earthquake. He did not even mention how offensive the idea was.

Throughout these conversations Bill was always polite and friendly, but firm and instructive. The calls always seemed to drain him. It was as if the thankless task of dashing the hopes of these poor old guys was exhausting physical work. Inevitably, the calls would conclude with Bill offering to send some information, make a connection, or help in some other minimally committal but magnanimous follow up.

When the call would finally end, Bill would put the phone down and lean back in his chair. He’d emit a long sigh followed by a laugh. “That guy has it all figured out,” Bill would say. He’s going to invent a new Braille system with three extra dots and it’s going to solve everything.”

Although I have mellowed with age, I have to admit that I have never suffered fools gladly, and greatly admired Bill’s ability to remain calm under extreme conditions. My accidental audits of Bill’s involuntary re-education classes would inevitably get me riled up. I told bill once after a particularly bad one that I wasn’t sure if I felt more sorry for him, or more sorry for them. Bill got a great big laugh out of that. We both knew that it was a toss-up as to who was getting the shorter end of the stick: Bill for having to try to educate resentful people who thought he was simply unappreciative of their genius, or the misguided geniuses themselves for intellectually leaping without first looking at the problem from the proper perspective.

If you want to design a really good sail boat, you don’t want some physicist land lubber who just understands fluid dynamics and mechanical advantage to do the job. You want someone who, in addition to knowing about those things, has a lot of experience sailing. the physicist who would be a shipwright should become a sailor. After a few dedicated years on the water he will have a better grasp of how to build a better boat. If he isn’t a complete misanthrope, in the process, he will have also acquired a community of fellow seafarers — an invaluable source of advice and constructive criticism. Now he’s ready to build his boat. With a little luck and good design sense, this combination of expertise, experience, and user feedback could, ultimately, lead to the development of a truly superior sailboat.

Bill Gerrey’s callers have neglected to take their sailing lessons or even to connect with a community of sailors. They already know what it’s like to be blind because they’ve tried to find the bathroom in the dark a few times. They have seen “The Miracle Worker,” and maybe talked to a blind person on the bus once or twice. In their minds, a lack of vision is synonymous with a lack of knowledge or ability. They presume that any invention they can come up with will naturally be an improvement for the lives of the blind. Market research complete!

Unfortunately, the problems that uninformed sighted inventors assume are critical are often complete non-issues for real blind people. Bill’s callers mistakenly assume that blind people are inexpert at being blind, and that we haven’t developed skills or techniques for dealing with the most obvious aspects of blind life. These self-perceived innovators are oblivious to the fact that in order to help us, they need, first, to ask us for help and be prepared to listen.

Now that I’m a big fancy scientist I field calls from these sighted inventors, too. Not as often, of course, because I’m not as famous or as friendly, but inexorably, they trickle in. We probably all get them from time to time, but those of us in accessibility research are particularly prone. There seems to be an endless supply of well-intended, ignorant sighted inventors who have come up with just the thing to keep Blind Timmy from inadvertently stepping in puddles, and they’re really bummed when their contribution to blindkind is so badly misunderstood and under-appreciated. From an informed perspective, I find so many of these inventions are unwanted, unnecessary, and, dare I say, kind of stupid, but it is incumbent on my colleagues and me to at least try to instruct these would-be product developers gently. The worst part is not their inevitably bruised feelings, it is the waste of their efforts. If only they would take the time to learn and understand, they might make a significant contribution. If only they would learn about blind people — our methods and our needs — before deciding what we need, they might come up with something truly useful. What a shame to waste so much enthusiasm on so many useless endeavors.

Recently I’ve been thinking about these guys again, and how cool it would be if blind people could help them. Wouldn’t it be great if we could somehow tap this resource? What if we could get to them before they invent their superfluous head-mounted escalator detectors? What if we could give them some kind of course or training materials that would educate them enough to at least start asking the right questions? How wonderful it would be if we could tell someone about the seventy-one ways we have already tried and failed to invent full-page refreshable tactile displays before they re-invented the twenty-seventh. If we could only direct their technical creativity before it goes into yet another irrelevant laser cane or face identifier, we might be able to help them actually help us.

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