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Anat Caspi speaks at White House panel on AI in Transportation

June 17, 2024 CREATE associate director Anat Caspi spoke on ‘Mapping, Visualizing, and Building the Future’ as part of a White House panel on AI in Transportation. Focused on developing a national transportation infrastructure observatory and an accompanying application ecosystem, the panel gathered innovators in transportation, aiming to align end users, researchers, entrepreneurs, and federal agencies while addressing privacy, cybersecurity, and policy challenges. Dr. Caspi highlighted the Taskar Center’s pioneering work on AI and transportation, particularly through the Transportation Data…

Three Myths and Three Actions: “Accommodating” Disabled Students

CREATE Ph.D. students Kelly Avery Mack and Ather Sharif, along with Lucille Njoo, share three common myths about students with disabilities. They reveal the reality of their inequitable experience as grad students at UW, and propose a few potential solutions to begin ameliorating this reality, both at our university and beyond.

Alice Wong and Patty Berne: Two UW lectures moderated by CREATE researchers

January 29, 2024 Winter 2024 quarter kicked off with two outstanding conversations with women of color who are leaders in disability justice. Alice Wong: Raising the visibility of disabled people First, Alice Wong discussed topics important to her work in raising the visibility of disabled people. Wong’s book Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life was the topic of the Autumn 2023 CREATE Accessibility Seminar. CREATE Director Jennifer Mankoff started the conversation asking Wong about her experience as a disabled person…

Research at the Intersection of Race, Disability and Accessibility

October 13, 2023 What are the opportunities for research to engage the intersection of race and disability? What is the value of considering how constructs of race and disability work alongside each other within accessibility research studies? Two CREATE Ph.D. students have explored these questions and found little focus on this intersection within accessibility research. In their paper, Working at the Intersection of Race, Disability and Accessibility (PDF), they observe that we’re missing out on the full nuance of marginalized…

CREATE’s Response to Proposed Update to Section 504 for Medical, Health

Updated November 30, 2023 The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office for Civil Rights published a proposed update to the HHS regulations implementing Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which prohibits disability discrimination by recipients of federal funding. This is the first comprehensive update to the regulations since they were first put in place more than 40 years ago. The proposed rule includes new requirements prohibiting discrimination in the areas of: For 60 days starting on…

CREATE’s Response to Proposed Digital Accessibility Guidelines

October 4, 2023 CREATE has submitted a response, in collaboration with colleagues within the UW and at peer institutions, to the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) proposal for new digital accessibility guidelines for entities that receive federal funds (schools, universities, agencies, etc.). The DoJ proposal invited review of the proposed guidelines. The response commends the Department of Justice for addressing the issue of inaccessible websites and mobile apps for Title II entities through the approach proposed through the Notice of…

People with Disabilities are a Population with Health Disparities

September 29, 2023 In September 2023, the Director of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities announced the designation of people with disabilities as a population with health disparities. The designation is one of several steps National Institutes of Health (NIH) is taking to address health disparities faced by people with disabilities and ensure their representation in NIH research. Dr. Eliseo J. Pérez-Stable, in consultation with Dr. Robert Otto Valdez, the Director of the Agency for Healthcare Research…

Your Review & Comments Wanted: Proposed Federal Accessibility Standards

August 11, 2023 A proposal for new digital accessibility guidelines for entities receiving federal funds was released for review by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) on August 4, 2023.  Anyone affected by these guidelines has 60 days — through Tuesday, October 3, 2023 — to comment. The DOJ is still trying to decide exactly what the rule should say, how quickly public entities should improve digital accessibility, and what exceptions to allow. For example, the current rule states that…

Proposed Federal Accessibility Standards: CREATE’s Guide to Reviewing and Commenting

A proposal for new digital accessibility guidelines for entities receiving federal funds was released for review by the U.S. Department of Justice on August 4, 2023. Anyone affected by these guidelines had until October 3, 2023 to comment. August 2023 announcement Note that the comment period has ended. The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) is proposing new requirements for digital accessibility for the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Their goal is to provide public entities with clear and concrete standards…

Honoring Judy Heumann’s outsized impact

Judy Heumann — disability activist and leader, presidential advisor to two administrations, polio survivor and quadriplegic — passed away on Saturday, March 4. Heumann’s family invited the community to honor her life at a memorial service and burial that is now available on video with ASL, captioning, and English interpretation of Yiddish included. Who was Judy Heumann? Judy Heumann fought for disabled rights and against segregation. She led the “longest nonviolent occupation of a federal building in American history,” according to the New…

Increasing Data Equity Through Accessibility

Data equity can level the playing field for people with disabilities both in opening new employment opportunities and through access to information, while data inequity may amplify disability by disenfranchising people with disabilities. In response to the U.S. Science and Technology Policy Office’s request for information (RFI) better supporting intra- and extra-governmental collaboration around the production and use of equitable data, CREATE Co-director, Jennifer Mankoff co-authored a position statement with Frank Elavsky, Carnegie Mellon University and Arvind Satyanarayan, MIT Visualization…

Richard Ladner named AAAS Fellow

Congratulations to CREATE Director for Education Richard Ladner on being named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)! He is among 564 new fellows from around the world elected in 2021 for distinguished achievements in science and engineering. Ladner was recognized for his advocacy and inclusion efforts for people with disabilities in computer science and related fields. His work has included development of numerous tools to perform specific tasks, including translating textbook figures into formats…

UW Disability Studies, D Center win UW Medicine CLIME Grant

UW faculty and staff affiliated with CREATE, UW Disability Studies and the UW D Center have received a grant from the Center for Leadership and Innovation in Medical Education (CLIME) to explore what it means to be an ally to people with disabilities. “This is an integral issue informing professional education in the medical fields as well as in design and engineering, says PI Heather Feldner. “I am most excited that this project has the potential to further the conversation about how an…