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2025 Race, Disability and Technology Funded Research

September 22, 2025

In our ongoing efforts to support new avenues in research on race, disability, and technology, CREATE funded three new Race, Disability, and Technology (RDT) grants in 2025.

We are happy to report that this year we received more applications for the RDT grants than in previous years. We also received more applications from outside of CREATE, possibly a sign of our increased outreach to and visibility on campus, and certainly an indication of the importance of this grant mechanism to research efforts across the university.

Learn more

About the Race, Disability, and Technology initiative

Call for Proposals – Race, Disability, and Technology

Tier I project:
Digital Code-Switching and Masking in GAI Use for Multilingual and Multicultural People with Disabilities

Aaleyah Lewis, a Black woman with black locs pulled back, wearing a black button up shirt, smiling at the camera.
James Fogarty, a white man wearing a pink and blue plaid shirt with long, curly brown hair. He is posed with arms crossed and a warm smile.

CREATE Ph.D. student Aaleyah Lewis, with advisor James Fogarty, received a Tier I grant to explore how multilingual and multicultural people with disabilities engage in code-switching, in masking, and in the intersection of these practices in their daily digital lives.

Tier I project:
Health equity and telemedicine in a rural mining community in Brazil

Jonathan Warren, a white man with salt and pepper hair and dark-rimmed eyeglasses. He wears a blue button-down shirt and smiles happily.
A grainy photo of Rute Maia. She has dark hair pulled back and a brightly colored blouse. She looks over her shoulder at the camera.

Jonathan Warren, a UW professor of International Studies, and Dr. Rute Maia, researcher of Social Sciences, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte and a 2023–24 UW visiting scholar, were also awarded a Tier I RDT grant for a project about health equity and telemedicine in a rural mining community in Brazil.

Tier II project:
Reimagining accessibility technology in special education: A community-based approach to supporting students and families of color

CREATE awarded its first Tier II RDT grant to a team led by Carmen Gonzalez. Working with Seattle Public Schools, Dr. Gonzalez’s team will capture the lived experiences of 20 families who use accessibility technology in special education settings.

The team will talk to families from urban and rural areas, giving families control to guide the conversations and review what they share before it’s added to the digital storytelling archive. The collected stories will help create a professional development program for educators that challenges racism and ableism and better prepares them to support students who use accessibility tools.

Gonzalez is an associate professor in the UW Department of Communication and a co-director of the Center for Communication, Difference, and Equity and the CCDE’s Health Equity Action Lab.