 All right, hi everyone, and welcome to Centering Disability in Design, a panel conversation. My name is Kirsten Sweeney, and I use they or she pronouns, and I am the Accessibility and Inclusion Manager at Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, which means that my job is to prioritize disabled experiences in all areas of the museum through programs, including through programs like this one. I am a non-binary autistic person with short, shaggy, dark brown hair. I'm wearing glasses with red frames, and I have on a white collared shirt today. You might see me glancing down in front of me. That's because I am reading off of a script. We have live card captioning and ASL interpretation available for this program. You can access the captions from your Zoom menu by clicking the captions button. And our interpreters will be spotlighted along with the speakers throughout the program. There will be a few slides later on towards the beginning of the presentation, and all and all visuals will be described. You can use the Zoom Q&A feature to ask the panelists questions throughout today's program. You can also use the Zoom reaction feature, as I already see some people doing to express your non-verbal excitement or agreement or anything like that with what's going on. But if you submit something in the Q&A, we will answer as many questions as we can during the Q&A section at the end of today's program. You can also use the Q&A to let us know if you have any on-net access needs today. This program is all about centering disability, and that includes making this space as disability-centered as possible. We're going to move slowly today, honoring our needs and savoring our time in disability community together. Please don't hesitate to share what you need in order to participate today, including asking our panelists to slow down or repeat things if needed. Today's program will be 90 minutes long. The panel conversation will last until about 4 p.m. Eastern. It's 3.05 Eastern right now, so in about an hour, we'll wrap up the panel, after which we'll take a five-minute break and then return for our Q&A until 4.30. So with that, we'll dive into today's conversation. I want to start by saying that this Centering Disability and Design program is one of many free programs that Cooper Hewitt is offering as part of our 2023 National Design Week celebrations. And launched in 2006, National Design Week celebrates the important role design plays in all aspects of daily life, and it's held in conjunction with our annual National Design Awards. National Design Week is going through this Sunday, so you can head to our website, cooperhewitt.org, to learn more about some of the other exciting programs that we have going on this week, and also learn about this year's award winners. So now I will pass things off to our moderator for today's conversation, Dr. Bess Williamson. Dr. Williamson is a historian of design and material culture and professor of art history, theory and criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is the author of Accessible America, A History of Disability and Design, and co-editor of Making Disability Modern Design Histories. Her work explores diverse histories and practices of design that extend expertise to users and communities and challenge designers to address access and power in their work. Bess, I'm going to spotlight you and over to you. Hi, thank you so much, Kirsten. And thank you to our interpreters and captioners. There's a lot of people working on this broadcast, both visible and invisible. And I just really, I guess, especially want to appreciate Kirsten's attention to access and can we all take this invitation to slow down and our Zoom calls. So I'm working on that thinking about that as we enter in here. I am Bess, I'm a white middle-aged woman with brown hair and metal glasses. I'm wearing a black collared shirt and a rebirth garments neck kerchief with purple and black patterning. And I'm joining you from a slightly cluttered bedroom office in Chicago. And I'm going to introduce each of the three panelists as they show some of their work. So we asked them to make a couple of slides to introduce their work. So I'm going to introduce each panelist with their slides so that we can kind of keep all of their amazing histories and accolades in mind as we hear them speak. So our first panelist will be Olivia may M ascension, who uses she her pronouns. Olivia has oriented her career path toward building inclusive communities as an architect and design researcher from Oakland, California. She started off with helping Bay Area nonprofit organizations through construction project and property management, including the ed Roberts campus, a universally designed building in Berkeley that houses several disability centered organizations. She then transitioned into the design and construction of public safety buildings, public sector offices and community spaces, and K through 12 educational facilities with a focus on going beyond the building code minimums and finding creative solutions to enhancing accessibility in the environment. Ascension's notable research projects include a study assessing the efficiency of the, sorry, the efficacy and accessibility of existing evacuation protocols and building safety codes, collaboration with university faculty on the post occupancy evaluation of the ed Roberts campus, and she's a graduate program project, studying the accessibility of elementary schools in the Philippines. She's currently serving as a public member of the US access board. So Olivia we're looking forward to hearing about your work. Thank you so much best and I wanted to start off by saying thank you to Cooper Hewitt for inviting us all here today to talk to you about something that all of us here on this panel. You guys are so passionate about I myself am really excited to be here. As best mentioned, my name is Olivia as soon as shown my pronouns are she her. I am a Filipino woman with medium length dark hair, tan skin and dark glasses, currently wearing a top that is my favorite color yellow. Thank you all from my bedroom in Oakland, California. And I use a wheelchair, which is an important part of how I became the architect that I am today. So growing up in the Philippines during a time when accessibility and architecture was not quite a priority. And then at the age of 11, moving to the United States, just a few years after the ADA was passed. There was this pretty jarring transition and experience that led me to this sudden freedom of movement. And that was so mind blowing for young Olivia. So, we can go to the next slide. It was at that point at a pretty young age that I quickly and very clearly realized that the design of the built environment has the power to foster independence, promote inclusivity and create community. Next slide. Further on into my career, I've also learned that one of the keys to ensuring justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion, which, you know, are concepts that we are that we're putting great value in this last few years is really providing accessibility for everybody. And what I strive to be my role in the building industry is to advocate for that principle in what I will show you to be the following interconnected sectors. Next slide. And this started describing the projects that I've been working on already, but I wanted to share them with you myself. And the first, of course, is architectural design. I've been very fortunate to have worked with firms who value serving people, and who I can easily have open dialogues with when it comes to the importance of accessibility. On the screen are some are images of some of the projects that I have worked on in the last few years. And one commonality that they all have is whether we're designing fire stations, or laboratories, high school gyms or classroom buildings. What we want is to represent the invisible and to advocate for the people who might have historically felt left out in these spaces and shifting design perspectives to make sure that the marginalized have the opportunities to participate and experience the built surroundings. Next, next slide. The second sector is design research, learning more about how architecture affects human behavior and movement. So the work that I've done again, which best has has mentioned includes assessing the accessibility of fire and life safety code requirements and theorizing potential solutions on how to make fire safety design and emergency protocols better for those who cannot evacuate easily and independently. On the left of the screen is a copy of my research poster. And then on the right, I was also incredibly fortunate to be involved in the post construction management, and then five years later, the post occupancy evaluation of the Ed Roberts campus. So the photo on the right shows kind of its crown jewel of an image of a bright red helical ramp that goes from this first floor to the second floor. Next slide. And the latest research project that I started last year as part of the full bright program and is still ongoing is a study on the accessibility of elementary schools in the Philippines. Tying that back to my roots, I wanted to see for myself how access to education for disabled children has changed since I last lived there. I spent nine months over there, learned about all the things that have improved and unfortunately not improved. So on the screen are some photos, the top row show the environment, the learning environments that exist in the Philippines. And one of the things that I also value is how much I connected with a lot of wonderful people as shown on the bottom row of photos where I met a lot of learners with disabilities. I tell people that it's the hardest thing I've ever done, but it's also undoubtedly the greatest motivation for me to keep this conversation going. Next slide. Which is why I'm also really active in public advocacy, being active in architectural organizations like the American Institute of Architects, speaking at events like this. I'm given the greatest opportunities to meet like minded people, much like you all in this discussion and provided with an incredible platform to share what I'm most passionate about. And as for the latest thing that's happening, I'm really excited and honored for my latest venture of being appointed this past July to be part of the US Access Board. And that's me in a nutshell. Thank you so much, Olivia. And I think we can go to the next slide and I'll just speak over the slide. Before Sky talks about it themselves. So Sky Kubakub, who uses pronouns they them say Zemzir is a non binary Xeno gender disabled Philippinex neuro queer from Chicago Illinois. We, they are the creator of rebirth garments, a line of wearables for trans queer and disabled people of all sizes and ages, which started in summer 2014. Sky is the editor of the radical visibility zine, a full color cut and paste style zine that celebrates disabled queer life with an emphasis on joy. Additionally, they are the access brat, and the editor of a section on ethics and inclusion called cancel and Gretel at the literary fashion magazine just them and dandy. Sky has most recently been working on a free online queer Crip DIY fashion program with the Chicago public library called radical fit. Sky was named 2018 Chicago end of the year by the Chicago Tribune, and is a 2019 2020 Kennedy Center citizen artists and a disability futures fellow. All right, sky we're ready for you. Thank you so much best this is sky speaking. I'm sky kubakub say Zem they them pronouns. I'll do a little audio description of myself. I'm small Philippinex. I have a scale male headpiece in pink and a bunch of other colors but mostly pink spiky triangle eyeliner under one eye that's asymmetrical. Eyes lips queer Crip symbol laser cut plexiglass pink earrings, which are a design of mine that includes the newer accessibility icon from the accessibility icon project smash mishmashed with the trans symbol. And then I'm wearing a disco muscle poof jumpsuit. That makes me feel really strong because it has these like added little muscles on my shoulders so it just like gives me some strength visually. It's in a rainbow of colors and features some prints that are my late father's paintings that are very geometric have a lot of golden ratio spirals and jewel tones. I'm sitting in front of a background by sparklezilla. That's mylar and a bunch of bright pink and turquoise vinyls. And then I have two signs that I've created one that says nothing without us and one that says radical visibility. So on the screen. There is a photo of me. There's no description pretty much but with a unit hard in colorful neons and jewel tones and black and white patterns, along with a crop top and scale mail and chain mail. And I'm standing next to Alice Wong of the disability visibility project. Who's wearing dazzle camo black and white pattern, clashing leggings with the seams on the outside and cape and some chain mail accessories, along with a beanie that says clip on it. And next to her squatting on the ground is Nina Lidoff, who is was just my employee at the time, wearing a darker all black sheer Chevron dress with a big chain mail piece on her chest and we all have like geometric colorful makeup. I run rebirth garments, which is a clothing line for queer and trans disabled folks of all sizes and ages. And I started it after I both had the experience as a young teen, not having the access to gender affirming undergarments that were both celebratory of my identities, but also aesthetically pleasing and matched my style. Most of them were very medicalizing and kind of just ugly band aid looking gender affirming garments, but they wouldn't feel fun to have people really look at them so I wanted to make garments that that showed off all of my identities. And gained a physical a more physical disability when I was 21. I had always been neuro divergent and like radically visibly mad my whole life. But my stomach stopped working when I was 21. Now I'm pretty sure it had to do with my polycystic ovarian syndrome. But I stopped being able to wear a lot of the clothing that I had previously worn because I like to wear a lot of like really tight skinny jeans. So I had to make really comfy things with very soft waistbands or like no waistband at all like the unitars, or like this muscle poof jumpsuit. And yeah, I had wanted to make clothing for disabled folks previous to that and had made a little bit for a cousin of mine, but I, as I gained this more physical disability, I, or like yeah. I wanted to be able to make clothing that would be good for that and my neuro divergencies with sensory sensitivities and showing off my non binary identity. And I figured if that was something that I needed that then there will be lots of folks who would want it. And so I interviewed lots of folks to find out the types of things that they would want to wear. And now I make dancewear active wear swimwear, and then lingerie or undergarments. And I have the next slide. So I gained another new disability in the end of 2019. I had monocleosis from Epstein bar virus, which then turned into the post viral illness chronic fatigue syndrome. And I no longer was able to do as much work as I did previously because I was sleeping 15 to 20 hours a day. So I just really can't physically do a lot of the things that I did before. And it also impacted a lot of my like strength and balance and things like that. So I got really, I've gotten really into teaching youth and teens how to create their own intersectional clothing lines. So this is a photo from my radical fit incubator and my rebirth warriors incubator radical fit is my program with the Chicago public library. But there are currently 90 free DIY videos on the you media Chicago YouTube, where you can go see lots of tutorials on all sorts of DIY fashion from makeup to hair to nails to sewing your own chest binder, and all sorts of things like that. But we started it, or I started an incubator project two years ago, where I had students who were queer and disabled, apply to Chicago public library to be a part of it, as well as private students who I just knew who were queer or non binary or disabled. And we started making lots of clothes together so this is a photo from our most recent show, queer radical fair, this is the fourth queer radical fair we've done. And a lot of these. There's 22 models wearing 10 different designers works from, and the designers are from eight years old to not like 1819 years old. And we have models ranging from eight years old to 67 years old in this photo. So there's a lot of brightly colored spandex. There's disabled folks there's a wheelchair user. But he's wearing KN 95 masks in this photo. Yeah, so this is my current project that I've been focusing on because I just don't. Since I don't have the capacity to run rebirth garments the way that I used to. I just wanted to be able to then pass my knowledge on to the next generation so they can fill in the gaps that I'm leaving by becoming more disabled. And yeah, so I'm just excited for all of their work. Thank you best. Great. Thank you sky. All right, our third panelist is Christine Hempel. Christina is a disability and age inclusive researcher designer and innovator in 2015 she founded and continues to lead open inclusion, a London based global insight design and innovation agency. Hempel is a certified member of the market research society, a certified professional in accessibility with the IAP and currently chairs MRS unlimited, the disability inclusive research sector group in the UK. She's an ambassador for co innovate innovate at Brunel University, and a past leader and ongoing active member of the inclusive design for XR group at XR access. She is an economist and Asian studies scholar, got an MBA while having kids and has a weird and wonderful background that includes marketing strategy design and innovation in mining steel rail and shipping defense aviation retail banking wealth management and even having a short period as a professional athlete before finding her real home in inclusive insight design and innovation. She's never felt more at home as a neuro divergent individual and parent wife and daughter of family members who have different access needs and disabilities understanding and designing for human differences is a personal and professional joy. So Christine let's hear from you. Yes, and what a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much to the keeper Hewitt for making this space and for making a space that is inclusive in its design, but also in the content and, you know, we're all on this journey of inclusion and the thing I love most about this is it's constant discovery, uncovering and discovery. So let's discover together. I'm a white younger feeling older looking woman in with short darker hair curly in a wood paneled environment. It looks like it might be a shed down the back of the garden. It's actually just the house we live in France with open on in wood on the wall behind me, and I'm wearing a dark blue top. I founded open inclusion in 2015 with a really singular perspective or reason for it being there that still drives everything we do today. And that is to bring the perspectives of disabled and older individuals into design and innovation so that we can do better. There's a slide that we've got up which says great design requires great insight and that the best insight has come from those with significantly differentiated perspectives. I had a new experience and, you know, I heard I had a background in all sorts of weird and wonderful places that I had some we had a personal experience of disability. I'd always been neurodivergent and knowing that difference had some experiences that went kind of across the different perspectives of how we move sense think and feel differently as humans. I realised that these two toolkits that I was holding design and innovation with the fault and the cause of a lot of the failure I was seeing in the world around us. So your opens really set up to help listen more broadly to those that today tend to be under heard and under designed for actually where the most interesting and exciting design and innovation can happen. There's four images on the slide here and each one of them comes from a piece of research that we've run at Open. The one on the first one is the gentleman in England, of course, because he's wearing a tie and a shirt buttoned up to the top and a tie and a long black leather jacket. And his low vision. So he's got a monocle. So like like to to enhance the his vision so that he can read the signage in the supermarket that he's in. This was a piece of way finding work. And in fact, I had the pleasure of going to the Koopy Hewitt earlier this year and seeing the sign exhibition that they had there. And signage is one of those areas of design that many people don't think about. It's just there in the environment around us all the time that thought and consideration goes into how signage is created, who it's useful for and how useful it might be. And of course, some people can get excluded and particularly people with sight loss of different levels, but also people who think differently or who can't see things because they're at a different height. So this was a really interesting piece of research for this supermarket organization to help them understand how way finding within the store helps people manage what they're there to do, which is, of course, get the basket of goods they want and go home. The next one and that's really around understanding. So just understanding where is the friction? Where are the barriers today? The next one is the woman who's a black American woman who's got pretty disabled, powerful on her shirt. And Alicia, she's one of our community leads in the US. And she's laughing because we're talking about wearables design and she was sharing some of her experience about wearables. And this was about ideation. So really understanding and ideating together. Where is it that these things work? Where don't they? And how might they work better for different people with different needs? Alicia is a wheelchair user and so her needs and has some limited dexterity challenges. So her needs are specific and unmet by quite a lot of the wearables that are there today. Also as an intersectional individual, skin tone and her skin tone with additional pigmentation, she was talking about had more challenges with some of the wearables she uses than with others. So again, design, just not taking into consideration some of the differences that can make things work or not work for different individuals. The next one was about co-creation. So we've got a gentleman who's a wheelchair user, an electric wheelchair user. And he's talking to a Google doc, which is a little bit difficult to see there. So it's good that I'm audio describing it. And using voice UI that had been designed and testing out the latest design of an iterative co-creation process. So this is really feeding back in with the design team as it's being created to give rapid cycles of input as to what does and doesn't work well. And the last one is a gentleman who is looking at an app and it's a banking app. And this is when just before it had been created, it was testing that this worked and testing out in this case that the ID stage of it worked for someone with, you know, for him, non-visible disabilities. But the neurodivergent individual going through quite a complex processes could be very complex, particularly banking processes and checking that that worked at a stage when there was still a design layer to go before completion. Next slide please. In short, this says you can engage people all the way through. Oh, I'm so sorry. This one for some reason the printer's got very small on us. Research has a disability inclusion problem. Therefore design has an exclusion problem. This is the fundamentals that we work in every day is to try and address this disability inclusion problem in research. If we are over listening to some parts of society and under listening to others, particularly those with more specific needs and more distinct requirements, we're going to under design and we're going to cause exclusion. So there's such an opportunity here and the opportunity is disability really is an addressable design problem. This is talking about very much obviously the social model of disability of it's that point at which design fails people. There's also an identity of disability which many people own and love and there's a culture and community that goes with this. But here we're really challenging the design failures that create disabling environments and it is highly addressable. It's really significant. Many people move sense, think, feel or communicate in significantly enough in significantly different ways so that the environments as they're designed today don't work for them. I think it was Lenny Henry who's a BBC journalist who did some work that he put into a book called Access All Areas which was British based. I think it was 6% of the UK had what would be considered majority characteristics once you layer them all on top of each other. It's a very significant minority that is very significantly over designed for. So whether it's gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic disability, all the different characteristics that get marginalised, they actually are the significant majority community brought together. The difference between exclusion through design and inclusion and delight through design. And here is really the insight, who we're asking, how we're asking them and how we can engage. So to get really creative, curious, open and diverse designers to open the space for that. And that's also bringing more people into the design community with more perspectives and making more space right throughout the creative process from where what might we find a problem that needs to be addressed. So where what might we even put that creative energy right through to checking that something that's been put out in society is working as it was expected. Next slide please. So humans differ way more than we currently designed for and this is just such a lovely opportunity for us all. The legacy design practices that we have really can limit us and here we've got an illustration of four people on one side of a wall who all appear to be white, three of them are men, they're all wearing suits, one is female appearing. And on the wall is written norms, inaccessibility, bias, discrimination and skills gaps, which in my perspective are the reasons that people don't get to see the majority of the community, which can be on the other side of the wall. On the other side of the wall in the shade are people in a broader range of clothing, you know, someone with a service dog, someone who's a wheelchair user, a woman who's short of stature, just a broader range of humanity. So really, to get beyond empathy, we need to make space and actually empathy is talked about a lot, particularly at the moment. Empathy is a really important starting point, but it's an insufficient starting point because I can't possibly imagine what it's like to be someone else, particularly with my neurodivergent brain being me is complex enough to imagine being someone else. You know, is something I can't do, but I can ask and be curious in a constrained and useful way relevant to the space that I'm designing for others to describe what's relevant to that space. So empathy is a great starting point just in recognizing that there are others that are very different to ourselves. But then stepping beyond that in terms of understanding that difference is really about making space, not trying to understand in someone else's shoes or wheels. Beyond research subjects to get to co researchers, co designers roles really layered participation throughout and layered power throughout. Beyond the minimum viable product, which often over emphasizes characteristics that a majority of characteristics started with a minimum equitable valuable product. So really thinking about equity and value, not just minimum viable, which can often do quite significant harm in the process. People that create things always think they'll go back and fix them. But once harm is created, it tends to last a lot longer than it was expected. Getting beyond funky features that seem really cool at the time to designing value designing solutions. There is so much power in society at the moment we have technology and creativity coming at us in such wonderful ways to solve. We've also got significant unmet and undermet needs in our society. So to bring these two together in really useful and practical ways in creating solutions rather than things that that are meaningless features, which can be described as disability dongles. So getting beyond those things that were designed for but not with and by people with disabilities who know what's useful and know what might just be something that's a bit of an add on that is a lot of energy pushed into not much value. Inclusion lead. I'm going to jump in here for a moment if that's okay. I want to shift us so that we can we can have a couple of questions before we go to the audience q&a. And you were like just getting to a point that is really useful, I think for us to all. So thank you. Thank you. And I apologize. Being taking moderator privilege here to jump in here just because anyway there's a lot a lot so many things in my mind. And we'll we'll lose the slide so that we can see all of us and I think that will spotlight all of us is that correct. Yeah, so we'll get all of our people up here on the screen, and our interpreter as well so So, I just wanted to ask a couple of questions sort of generally and then I know the audience already has questions so we will get to those as well. Right where you were ending there Christine you were really emphasizing the idea of like designing with and you know taking into consideration so many of the kind of complex and specific perspectives that disabled people have and I wonder if I could just ask you all. The title of this panel is centering disability. And I wonder if you could just say what that means soon your practice. You know, I guess we're thinking in particular what does it not mean. And what are some of the guiding principles that you sort of think about when you think about centering or prioritizing disability. And I should say in your design lives. So go ahead and jump in panelists don't be afraid and we'll get to all of you. I'll start this is Olivia. Well for me, the process always kind of starts out as a selfish exercise, you know. How can I design spaces so that I can use it and joking aside, really what that translates to is trying to find out what I can do to emphasize and understand how to create spaces that not. That's not just something disabled people can access, but disabled people can thrive in. And, you know, the answer to that is to talk to disabled people, bringing them into the conversation. Design becomes more inclusive and richer when we have people of different types in the room from the very beginning of the design process. And I think, you know, that's where the importance of visibility and representation come in. So when I was talking to past and present colleagues. A lot of them have said that they never understood why certain building codes exist until they see me interact with it. And even as a disabled person, you know, all I know is my own lived experiences. I don't know what it's like to be blind or deaf or neurodivergent. And one of my best friends who's also in a wheelchair. We still run into circumstances where I go, oh, I didn't think of that. And, you know, yeah, so it kind of highlights that importance of getting to know disabled people, talking to them because of the insights that a lot of, you know, architects and people in the in the building industry have to learn more about. Thanks. Thanks so much for that. Yeah. Skye, do you want to jump in here. Yeah, this is sky speaking. Yeah, I also, I'm always talking to everybody about their needs. Every single model who's ever modeled for me I've interviewed. I always ask them what, what would make clothing more accessible to their bodies, their body minds, what would show off their gender expression best parts of their body, they want to highlight parts they feel vulnerable about. And then parts they feel vulnerable about but want to highlight in this context, and then like favorite colors and patterns. And I take all of that and try to make like a dream garment for them that might be pushing a little bit more brightly colored and more radically visible than they're used to. But it always has a really fun result and I can really see in their body and like mood and attitude and confidence, how much it just completely transforms them when they're wearing rebirth garments, or wearing something that they see as radically visible, and just how much being able to take that space for ourselves, and refusing to assimilate to these cis heteronormative patriarchal beauty ideals is just like the best way for us to live and find community. I understand that it's not always safe for us to be visible, but just like picking and choosing what the circumstances and situations are, where they feel safe to do so, and then really pushing those boundaries so that then. And then you can make friends because somebody will be like, oh, I'm really interested in what you're wearing like, what's this all about or like, I really see it as a type of flagging. In queer culture, there's like, hanky code and flagging so that queer folks in the know, know that you're queer so I see the way that I address as a type of flagging to attract, not like, not like relationship, like romantic attract, but like just like attract friends to become, yeah, part of my community. So yeah, and I think I've been, when I started, I would say that the clothing line was for the full spectrum of gender size inability but I was doing a lot to try to make abled a little bit more comfortable with what I was doing because they're so disturbed. But now that I'm a little bit more established, I feel much more good about just being like I make clothing for queer and trans disabled folks of all sizes. And like, yes, I am all about intersectionality, but like, it doesn't necessarily have to include you if you're a white cis then able bodied able minded person like not all spaces are for you. So, yeah. Thanks, I love how both you and Olivia are talking also about kind of like inter disabled or like disabled community, you know, sharing. I often think from my own work of like how much of historical access guides and accessible spaces, often assume that there was like only one disabled person in a space right and only one type of disability there's a, you know, in design school you can see these like personas where it's like one person has a broken arm one person who's a wheelchair and you know one person is deaf and doesn't, you know, incorporate the idea that like someone might be deaf and be a wheelchair user right but these and these kinds of connections. Christine I'd love to hear your perspective on this too. I think that's a really important point is that the practices around accessibility. The analogy I often use is it's like going to Cirque du Soleil and getting excited by the safety net. You know, it's really important as a safety net there. I'm so glad that people love building the safety net and making sure that it works and it's safe. But it's not what you go there for. And I love hearing Sky when you're talking about the joy, the delight, the fun, the experience of wearing the clothes that you make specifically for individuals. Livio when you're talking about the space in the university that has been created that is beautiful. You know, accessibility is such a minimalist way of looking at the world and it's actually how a lot of it's taught today. It's important and let's recognize that having minimum standards is a really valuable part of design. But what's really important is for designers to enhance their creativity by listening, by learning, by finding friction, by finding constraints and enjoying and really thriving in those as opposed to shying away from them. There is such opportunity to do better, not just in terms of accessibility, but in terms of the usability, dignity, adaptability, because as you say, not all spaces are for people. We want adaptability and optionality, not everyone is going to want everything, enabling the individuality to come through and essentially designing overall for experience. And the only way to do that is by listening. The one thing I'd say is you can't, the people might listen to this and go, but how do I do that? There's so much diversity within disability. Actually, it's one person who's so different from your perspective and then go to one more that's so different from the two and just keep building in layers within the relevant layers of that design space that you're considering. Great, thank you. I mean, one thing that, you know, I was struck reading your bio Christine like you have so many different backgrounds and I'm sure that's true also for other panelists, but I wanted to ask you a little bit. I mean, this is my kind of nerdy question as someone who works at an art and design school where these issues I'll say are more present than when I started teaching 15 years ago but still are often not really covered. And I wonder if you could say a little bit about like what you did learn in school but for those things that you didn't learn at school, where else you've looked to to learn in this area. And I'll just I'll leave it open ended like that there's lots of kind of ask within that but I'd love you to speak a little bit about like, how do you get into this field. Obviously, you're working from lived experience, but what are some of the other things that really shaped, you know, some of the other ways that you think, you know, that you found to learn about accessibility and to learn about this approach. School didn't help. Sorry for those in school but just as a start. I did things that weren't that useful. The thing that they learned the thing that I learned from school that was really helpful is I learned how to learn I learned how to work out. That was helpful. The actual learning a lot of that I've had to really actively go and unlearn because it wasn't that useful in fact not even was it not that useful. Some of it was just fundamentally wrong. So I think one of the interesting things is a key part of continuous learning is continually letting go of useless beliefs that are just not helping you and continually looking for them to let them go. So I love, I'm very curious. I love being curious. I love constantly learning a really huge amount but mainly I talk to people and if you put it within the relevance of what you're looking at at the time the things that you can actually influence that is. That's the way I've learned and obviously creating space for people to share that all the time has been what I do for a living so that's obviously something I take great pleasure and joy in. But we can all do that in our own way is and actually when we talk about design to me that's everyone that's not someone with a capital D design on the card. We all design whether it's the sort of social space that we have with our friends whether that's what we do and where ourselves whether that's how we engage with our teams at work or physical spaces physical products or anything. So just constantly considering what's a better outcome here who might be missing in the consideration of that today and how might we engage with them to learn what that experience is so that you can infuse the creativity just with better thought. Thanks for that. I think that's a great question that comes up often of like who are we missing because there you know there may be some discussion included right but more work to do there. Olivia thoughts on the school question or other other places of learning. Yeah, I mean for architecture school. That's kind of a beast on its own right and when I was an undergrad. Learning about accessibility was close to none and it's very unfortunate and like you like you said best I had to rely on my own lived experiences to understand how to design for disabled people. So when I was applying to grad school, I had to be really intentional when seeking out programs that would teach me about universal design. You know, when it was time to decide which one to go to, I literally called all of them and asked hey this is what I want to learn about what can you provide for me and most of them have responded with kind of this generic. I mean, we kind of know people that could help you. And I ended up going to University of Oregon where the response was, Oh, this professor specializes in universal design and this professor teaches a class a required class that has a whole section on designing for you know disability so Yeah, so I had to be really intentional with that. But I mean, right now, I've been super grateful to be part of conversations just like this one. I'm part of the AIA, the American Institute of Architects. I have been given a lot of opportunities to facilitate and participate in these conversations. And we invite students to, you know, I participate in these conversations and that that becomes a really crucial part of their learning experience. And then something that I'm really advocating for right now. So actually have more disabled students and architecture school. I think that's something that's going to be like a rich addition to that learning experience. And it's a huge task because doing that also means redefining what architecture school is like. So it's going to be this long, but very worthy process. So yeah. Sorry. This is sky speaking. So I went to the School of the Art Institute which is where best works. And I truly think that it was one of the worst decisions of my life to go to college at all, but especially the School of the Art Institute. They straight up deceived me about what they were all about. I think a lot of times, whatever schools say that they are like centering and what they value and what they're all about is where they need to work on the most. I do remember that when I did like the tour in the fashion department because that was where I originally intended on going to. They did have such an emphasis on how like how unhealthy of a lifestyle it was they would be bragging about how the students would bring their sleeping bags and sleep in the hallways because like, yeah, they weren't being given enough time in class they weren't being given enough tools or resources. So the fact that they were like they thought it was so funny and such a brag about things but I just saw it as like SAC should be so embarrassed about and so ashamed to be talking about because I'm positive that my stomach disability wouldn't have gotten as bad as it did if I didn't go to college. I'm not going to go to SAC specifically because even though I was a hard worker. I've always been really good at and like thrive like well yeah, looked like I'm thriving in school I've always been very successful in school but the toll it took on my body and my brain was not worth it. I had panic attacks my whole life every single day, pretty much for all of the times that I was in school and as soon as I graduated, I stopped having panic attacks and I hardly have them now. I was like, oh yeah, maybe that environment is just not great for neurodivergent folks for disabled folks. It was also awful to be a person of color at SAC and a queer person. I did a lot of my learning around disability design. It was all self directed. So I did have a couple of amazing teachers, and I say a couple because it was only a couple. But like Romy Crawford who I wrote my manifesto radical visibility a queer Crip stress reform movement for but I just did a lot of reading about Crip theory outside of class to include as references in that. But yeah, like, when I started rebirth garments before I wrote the manifesto I would tell my classmates or my teachers about the work that I was doing and I was like I want to make clothing for queers with disabilities. Every single time people will be like queerness isn't a disability. How insulting your being and like, you know, we worked so hard to get out of the DSM and I'm like, I don't think any of y'all know what you're talking about to begin with. But yeah, they just didn't realize that queer that disabled folks could have a sexuality or even a gender, if they wanted to. So they thought that I was saying queerness was a disability when I was like no queers with disabilities. And I just want to note, you know, I think one of the key things that sky brings up here is the kind of work ethic, or sort of, yeah sort of boasting about hard work that I have encountered at many, many design schools when so when design schools, I'll just get on my own soapbox but when I speak at design schools and they ask us like, Well, what should we do, you know, who should we work for in terms of access and I'm like, look within, you know, is your own school a place that you can attend without staying up all night. I'm always working in the studio in a specific place or using a particular kind of desk, you know, using particular kinds of visual media. These are all core questions for all of our institutions to ask museums, schools, all kinds of workplaces so I just really appreciate you all thinking to that, recognizing that those school situations are often not feeding us. And just to say that all of you are doing work to like educate as well at the same time. I want us to move to Q&A because there's a lot of great questions but before I do I'll just ask you all, you know, you're all doing amazing work, you know, in your own sort of professional spheres but I wonder where do you look to for inspiration what do you see outside of your own practice that's innovative or that's exciting to you. I think there's resources that we can suggest for the audience or just work that you're seeing themes that you're seeing, just to close out this part of our discussion. I'm happy to start here. Thanks. I just, in terms of, and it kind of goes to the question before is, there are teachers everywhere. There are teachers to learn everywhere, including in academic institutions and some wonderful work going on there actually especially by the students so you see papers coming out across different universities but also by academics, you know, there's wonderful work. There's wonderful work happening in organizations, there's wonderful work happening with innovators and entrepreneurs and there's wonderful individuals sharing experiences and sharing ideas. Following your curiosity would be my one thing and actually just rather than, you know, spend the time when you've got spare time learning in fields that you're not so comfortable or confident in but you're curious about. So, and there's so many places within the disability sphere. There are some, you know, wonderful disability groups. There are great places to learn where people share, you know, share experiences through great community for people to learn from all the time. It's just going there rather than expecting it's going to come to you. So I think learning is almost unlimited and following your own passions and your own curiosity towards it. It's amazing how many doors open up and get a little bit. Just ask people. It's amazing who you could meet if you just reach out and ask people as an example anyone here. You reach out and ask us as panellists and say I'm interested in something specific. So ask people that you really admire and respect and you can learn from them. I just find teachers everywhere. So I just realized that was non specific. It's fine. Sky, I love you any thoughts. This is sky speaking. I'm most inspired by disability justice, queer theory, Crip theory, fat liberation. But I really, I've been so inspired by the kids, kids and teens that I work with as a person who's always seen as a teen. I'm about to be 32, like in two weeks, but everybody thinks that I'm 16 and just like seeing how terribly people treat kids and teens and don't take them seriously. And yeah, as a young looking person, being like, I don't want, I don't want just me to be taken seriously or other young looking adults. I want kids and teens to be taken seriously. So I love just getting to know what the kids and teens these days, what they need and want and then just trying to come up with fun, liberatory solutions that are joyful for them. I want to echo what both Christine and sky have said. And also, I mean, being involved in active in the design research world, like having being able to travel and seeing how other countries have and other, I mean, other cities even from, from the one that I live in, how they have dealt with accessibility and the built environment. Those are, those are the ways that I really find inspiration and, and again motivation to, to do more. All right, thank you all so much. We're not done yet, but we're going to take a short break to just breathe for a second. Folks in the audience, please add your questions and comments to the chat. And I'll pull out some key gems to talk about when we come back in just a few minutes here. This is Kirsten. Thank you best. Sorry, interpreters back on screen. Just, well, we'll take a break for five minutes. So we'll come back at for 14 Eastern and we'll have a little bit of time for questions. We have some great questions in the Q&A. We won't be able to get to them all, but please feel free to keep dropping them in and we'll get to as many as we can. So, see you all in five minutes. Thank you. Awesome. But I'm going to pull some out and see if we can get some thoughts. So, one question which I think was sort of mostly pitched to Sky and Olivia. And I'll just say it was written by our friend and colleague Jen White Johnson who herself is a wonderful designer, graphic designer, activist, parent, and graphic design professor as well. She's a great work in this space, but Jen asked, and I'm going to read from her question. What advice do you have for young disabled designers and students on how to show up unapologetically in spaces where the disabled aesthetic or disabled contribution is sometimes erased or even co-opted? This is Sky speaking. Yeah, I know sometimes it's really hard. For me, I had a lot of social anxiety, but this was like my main way to relate to people. You know, I mean, since I'm a neurodivergent, I'd like need something to like make people come to me so that I can make friends. But yeah, I guess I just don't really have never really listened to like authority figures that much about like, yeah, what I should be doing. It's a really hard path to choose to like constantly have to argue with teachers who should know better, but they just want to keep with the status quo. But I guess for me, I just decided not to go into the fashion department and instead I took fiber arts classes because they were more in line with my values and like let me do more of the things that I was interested in. But yeah, and also in radical visibility manifesto, I always talk about like having current approaches to radical visibility but saying that sometimes we'll have to change it up because it might get co-opted or it has been co-opted. Like, yeah, right now I'm still doing all very colorful stuff, but like another way to be wearing just like all white or like all reflective fabrics or wearing only things that are like really big. So yeah, just always trying to be flexible and adaptive to change with the environment that just stays true to your values. And that yeah, adults and teachers don't know everything like it's really easy for you as a young person to be like, I guess I have to listen to them but you truly never have to listen. I know for safety sometimes you might have to like mask or like just go with what the teachers are saying but like you don't have to believe what they are telling you in your core. That's great, Olivia. I mean, it's like what Sky said, it's kind of a hard path to go on to be this unapologetically invisible. But, you know, I think it's important to note and to encourage younger people, especially younger disabled designers and students to be confident that you know your stuff. You know, you already you have the lived experiences. And I think very often that is much more valuable than what you learn in a textbook. And yeah just just just be confident about that. I think that's often. It's something that I had to learn for a long time. Like it took me a while to kind of to gain a gain that confidence and be like, um, Yes, I, I know my stuff. I know how to design for people like me and I know how to talk to other people and find out how, you know, what their needs are also. This isn't, um, I guess, don't let what other potentially more experienced people tell you that you're wrong when you know that you've already lived it and you know that what you're thinking about is right. So, um, yeah, I mean, just kind of echoing what Sky had said already. I love that. You know, like, you know what you're talking about. I mean I think trust, having young folks to trust their instincts and also to, to acknowledge how for those young people who grow up with a disability who grow up navigating educational and social systems they often have a lot of expertise that their faculty don't know about. And that's something I think significant and I'll just say, you know, as a prospect from a perspective of someone came up in school and grad school who is not disabled. Right that that there's a lot of writing about design and disability that's not written from the perspective of disabled people and seeking out those perspectives, and that includes recognizing that you know if you are a disabled student in a design school, you are strong, you're making a huge contribution, right, your perspectives are valuable. I don't want to say valuable sounds so monetizing right but valid. It's such a significant, you know, I guess was a significant realization for me in my own education. I'm going to try to kind of combine that there are a few questions about kind of finding the right people to work with. Right, which is to say, you know, how, how, what are some of your experiences in finding the right people to work with but that might also be, you know, are there barriers for especially I'm thinking maybe Christine for you, working with bigger corporate entities of kind of making sure that they're getting the right perspectives without basically asking disabled people to work for free. Or to be sort of, you know, tacked on at the end. Can, can folks take on some of some of those questions, whatever that might mean to you and your very different design processes. Thanks. I'm more than happy to kind of pick up on this for a start. I think the first thing is it needs to be fair. So, you know, the working for free. No, absolutely not your all our research as an example is always paid research and it's pay your well above standard research rates for a really good reason because you're taking more out of someone's day. If there's more complexity in the day anyway so making sure it's equitable to start to make sure that it's inclusive that the space that you're inviting people into requires really designing and co researching with people with different lived experiences. So we have community leaders that actually help us design our research. They have lived experience of, you know, seven different sub communities within, you know, our border community. And they themselves are leaders within their community so spend time understanding beyond their lived experience, other experiences within the community so say the site loss community hearing loss community dexterity mobility neuro divergence chronic health and so on. So, to design that space with people that have got that experience because no one of us has all those experiences we can't possibly to invite people in and give them the microphone to not just always control the questions but to actually give people the opportunity to shape how they express so there's an element of that that you can't need to control because you're asking things in a specifically designed way to get feedback that you can then analyze and understand in a really useful way that there's an element of freedom that needs to be provided in our research as well to give people the opportunity to express things that you just didn't even know were there you didn't even know the right question to ask. So it's an art as much as it is the science, but working with the different communities and actually for us you're having that in our organization to have that different sets of muscles almost think of it that way that can help us know where to spend that energy. And then of course doing it within guidelines of clear, easy to understand and completely align to consent, fair and equitable payments and also sharing back with people your influence this this is where it's going to go this is what's going to happen with it next so also just clarity of where does this process and giving people agency to understand their role in the broader creative process. There's some of the things we do and we're just to be clear, we don't have this, we're always learning, we're always trying to improve what we're doing every time we get a new research project in a new space, we kind of have to learn again because it's a new space where we might get things wrong. So that's what we do to start with that's not right and there'll be more things that we're going to keep learning as well. Olivia Sky any thoughts on this idea of kind of working with the right folks are getting. I also thinking of like kind of barriers to collaborate sometimes to right one. Sometimes setting up a collaboration itself to be accessible can be a challenge. Any thoughts. This is Olivia and get it. I've had experiences over the last few years of trying to find people and collaborate with people on these on talking about these types of topics. And, and I think some of the questions that we have on here. Ask, like, how do we find these people you know where do we find these people and really have to be very intentional and write a lot of cold emails and make a lot of cold zone calls. That's where I kind of find value in talking to basically everyone and asking who do you know that could fit in this who would be interested and can fit in this profile that could help with this conversation and yeah, another big thing is compensation and making sure that the the value that they bring to the table is is met with a compensation. Thank you. Yes, this is really key and just to say we cannot just assume that disabled people have endless of time to educate others right to do your research. The suggestion I always give my students to or my own self is also to do your research before you talk to someone so you're not asking them the same questions that are already out there to ask sort of basic accessibility kinds of questions when you know we can think of like we're asking people for sort of their advanced level of input as well. But yeah that compensation this is just access should be built into the budget and compensating collaborators should be built into into any budget. I was curious there's there's one question here and this is a question I always think of you know we all know where access doesn't work. But I wonder if we could end this by sharing you know some of our favorite examples of accessibility and maybe that's a small aspect maybe that's a tool or feature that we like to include. What are some of the things that we think of as like on our list of best best kinds of examples. Hi speaking. One of my favorite projects that I've personally worked on is the radical visibility collective. And these are performances they're very much like my typical fashion performances for rebirth garments but I bring in other folks. There are two of the collections it was designed co designed by me, Jake folks and Compton Q, but Jake folks is like a queer pop star here. They mostly just go by folks, and they wanted to make music based off of my manifesto. I did a show where I didn't really have time to do audio descriptions of all the outfits due to the institutions lack of time for that. And so I asked folks if they would make songs based off of my manifesto but where the lyrics were the audio descriptions at the same time and I really love the results and it's something that I feel very happy with so y'all can check out those videos at go.com slash rebirth garments and they're just the ones that are labeled radical visibility collective and RBC to so yeah that's my favorite joyful access. Thanks right Olivia. Yeah, I'm thinking about this and in the realm of environmental design, one of kind of the latest things that pop into my head is things that kind of started becoming more of a thing when the pandemic happened and that is hands free automation of everything. And it's something that I hope to continue and we don't lose over time now that we're quote unquote, getting back to whatever normal used to be. And yeah, I think when the pandemic started and all of a sudden all of these new hands free technology started popping up. It gave, you know, the physically disabled community kind of this. It's something that we have been asking for for a long time, and it was never worth the money or the time. Until it became, you know, a worldwide need all of a sudden and then we, we put in those investments and it. Yeah, I mean, it's such a small thing and something that we take kind of for granted now but there's still places where, you know, we can't even open the door because there isn't like an automatic push buttons that we can that we can use. So this trend that started because of the pandemic is something that I hope to see kind of continue on. And I'm really excited for what I hope to be the future of this kind of automation. Thanks so much. We just have where a little one minute over Christine if I could ask you just real quick to add yours. I'll very quickly say things that work end to end. So things where people have thought about how people find it, the packaging, how they might open it, how they get it from out of the packet to working, how they can recharge it or manage it, how they can get service. So, and that's just as true of a service. So banking services, we're working quite a lot of things that would be seen as boring industries, making them. You don't even notice that it's designed in. You don't even notice that that quiet space was designed with you. You don't even notice that banking service was designed in such a way that you're divergent individuals can get a little more easily because the work was done for you. So to make great design can sometimes be very, very quiet. That's such a great big picture spot for us to end with. Thank you so much. Really just a delight to have the three of you, especially because your practices are also different. But so many of the themes that you touched on, bring us together. Thank you so much for such a great participatory audience. The emoji webinar feature is really like giving me life right now. So it's wonderful. Thank you all for your not your, your noticed and your questions in the chat. Kirsten, I'll hand it to you in case there's any business that happens to happen at the end here. Otherwise, thank you so much. Yeah, this is Kirsten. I want to give a huge thank you to Bess and to our panelists for such a really wonderful conversation. I wish we could sit here all day and talk, but we do have to, I guess, go on with their lives. I want to visually describe that there are hearts and clapping emojis and little party poppers popping up all over the screen, which is really lovely. That's what Bess was referencing before. So thank you all so much for joining us. The recording of this panel will be posted to Cooper Hewitt's YouTube channel in just a couple of weeks. And I will also drop my email and chat and I'll say it out loud as well. It's Sweeney, S-W-E-E-N-E-Y-K-S-I dot edu. If you have any follow up questions about this panel about other events at Cooper Hewitt. I'm happy to chat. So thank you all again for joining us. If you're in New York, come to Cooper Hewitt for some more of our National Design Week celebrations through the end of Sunday this week. And have a great rest of your Thursday, everyone. Thank you, everyone.