This workshop is organized by:
- Jennifer Mankoff (Director, CREATE center and faculty, Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering) does research focused on accessibility through giving people the voice, tools and agency to advocate for themselves; and she herself identifies as disabled. She strives to bring both structural and personal perspectives to her work. For example, her recent work in fabrication of accessible technologies considers not only innovative tools that can enable individual makers but also the larger clinical and sociological challenges to disseminating and sharing designs. Similarly, her work in the intersection of mental health and discrimination uses sensed data to explore how external risks and pressures interact with people’s responses to challenging moments.
- Kirk Crawford is a Ph.D. student in the Human-Centered Computing (HCC) program at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). His research interests center around accessibility and inclusivity considerations for marginalized communities, particularly the LGBTQIA+ community, people of color, people with disabilities, and those at the intersection of these identities. He is particularly interested in exploring how the use and non-use of assistive technology (AT) impact community access to resources and spaces, as well as ways to improve the design and implementation of AT to meet the needs of these communities.
- Foad Hamidi is an Assistant Professor in Information Systems, and faculty in the Human-Centered Computing (HCC) program at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), where he runs the Designing Participatory Futures (DARE) lab. His work focuses on the participatory design of assistive technologies with a focus on cultural and contextual factors, and developing equity-based approaches for technology-rich informal learning programs and community-based infrastructures. He is particularly interested in experiences at the intersection of multiple dimensions of vulnerability, such as forced migration and disability.
- Kelly Avery Mack is a final year PhD Candidate in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. Their work focuses on increasing representation of disability in digital technologies (e.g., avatars, AI systems) and broadening who is represented in accessibility research. They often seek to merge these goals in their work, intentionally recruiting people with chronic illnesses, people with mental health conditions, and neurodiverse people in their work, as well as people with multiple marginalized identities like disabled people of color and queer disabled people. They are also chronically ill and disabled.
- Jason Wiese is an Assistant Professor in the Kahlert School of Computing University of Utah, where he runs the The Personal Data and Empowerment Lab. His research focuses on empowering end users in their everyday lives with useful access to their personal data and other novel computing experiences. For example, some of his recent work examines the experiences of people who have had spinal cord injuries, seeking to understand their real-world needs and ways that technology might better facilitate their everyday lives. Outdoor recreation is one example, where he has found that people with higher levels of impairment are not afforded the same opportunities to independently control adaptive recreation experiences.