February 20, 2025
CREATE, and the accessibility community, is honoring Devva Kasnitz. An adjunct professor in Disability Studies at CUNY School of Professional Studies, Kasnitz was a beloved educator, advocate, and colleague in the world of accessible technologies. She passed in January 2025.
It would be difficult to understate Kasnitz’s indelible impact on the field of disability studies and accessibility, or breadth of her influence.
Not confined to academic circles alone, she was deeply committed to social justice, always striving to bridge the gap between theory and activism. She worked tirelessly to ensure that disability studies didn’t just remain an intellectual exercise, but instead contributed to real-world change for people with disabilities. Her work helped to redefine what it meant to engage with disability—not as a condition or an issue to be “fixed,” but as a complex, multifaceted aspect of human identity and experience that should be understood in its own right.
On the Make4All website, CREATE Director Jennifer Mankoff and her colleagues Gillian Hayes and Cynthia Bennett shared the news of Kasnitz’s passing and their appreciation for her leadership in empowering people with disabilities.
“Kasnitz was a transformative figure… pioneering work that bridges academia, advocacy, and innovation. Her interdisciplinary approach has shaped how we understand disability as a cultural, social, and political phenomenon, as recognized by her 10-year impact award at ASSETS 2021 (shared with Mankoff and Hayes).
“She has shaped an entire generation of new technologists who are empowered to prioritize disability studies, disability justice, and related concepts in their work.” In another memorial post, Kasnitz’ friend and collaborator Susan Fitzmaurice wrote, “Devva was truly one of a kind. I don’t think she ever knew the word no. The disability community would not be what it is today without her incredible leadership in so many areas.”
Devva made space in our field for disabled people to be seen and feel successful and know that they were welcomed by letting them know that they could bring them their full selves to their academic work. She had a huge influence on accessibility and computer science that few people knew about, and tried to bridge the fields of accessibility and disability studies through publications and workshops. As Mankoff puts it:
“Devva’s influence on me was profound and started shortly after I began my first faculty position at UC Berkeley, when she introduced me to disability studies and helped me learn myself and my disability in the process.”
Jennifer Mankoff, CREATE Co-founding Director
She published only two papers in any computer science conference, both at ASSETS, 10 years apart. The first paper won the 10-year impact award mentioned above, and 10 years later two disabled students who had been influenced by that first paper co-authored the second (which also won an award).
Mankoff recalls, “We interviewed each other about what it meant to be an academic with disabilities. And part of those interviews were self-descriptions of who we were and what our experiences were. I transcribed Devva’s speech because Zoom was unable to understand it, and that transcript was so eloquent and simple that one of the students looked at it and she said, ‘Oh, is that a poem?’ And so Devva’s description of her disability became published as a poem.”
My disability is that,
when I walk into a room,
Everyone in that room
who can see or hear
Labels me as disabled,
And treats me differently.
Because of how I look,
And how I move.
Because of how I sound,
I am instantly set apart.
And that is my disability.
I can’t blend.
I can’t hang out
in the background.
I’m always visible.
I’m on display.
And of course my reaction is,
If everyone is going to stare anyhow…
Let’s give them something to look at.
“Devva lives on in CREATE,” says Mankoff, “which embodies so much of what she taught me about how to make space for, support, and center disabled people and disability studies perspectives. CREATE is part of her legacy, not only in spirit, but because she generously gave advice and support to the center.”
Academic career
Devva Kasnitz trained as a cultural geographer at Clark University and then as a medical anthropologist at the University of Michigan, with postdoctoral work at Northwestern University and at the University of California, San Francisco in health policy and disability in urban and medical anthropology. She held appointments at UC Berkeley (1995-2008) during which time she helped found its disability studies department and CUNY School of Professional Studies (2014-2025). Twice she was named the Kate Welling Distinguished Scholar in Disability Studies. She was the Executive Director of the Society for Disability Studies for much of its lifespan (1984-2012) and an Advisory Council Member to CommunicationFirst. Kasnitz received a 2000 Switzer Fellowship and was the 2014 recipient of the Society for Disability Studies, Senior Scholar Award. Much of her work focused on speech impairment and the politics of social participation and on disability services in higher education.
Kasnitz worked in disability studies from 1979 until her passing in 2025, maintaining an interest in ethnicity and immigration. She was on the founding boards of: the Society for Disability Studies, the Anthropology and Disability Research Interest Group of the Society for Medical Anthropology, and the Association of Programs for Rural Independent Living, and mentored a generation of disability studies scholars in the U.S., Australia, and Guatemala.
One close colleague, Gloria Davies, noted in her blog that Kasnitz was “one was one of the first to push for the inclusion of disability as a central focus of sociological inquiry and was instrumental in establishing disability studies as a legitimate and vital area of academic research.”
Kasnitz received research funding from NIH, NIMH, NIDRR, the American Anthropological Association, The Felton Bequest, and Sprint Foundation, and was a
Selected Bibliography
In 2025, she co-authored an article in Communications of the ACM on accessibility and AI: J. Mankoff, D. Kasnitz, L. Jean Camp, J. Lazar, H. Hochheiser: AI Must Be Anti-Ableist and Accessible, Communications of the ACM: 67 (12), 40-42
In 2022, she was co-organized a podcast on The Power of Art and AAC: Disrupting Racism, Ableism, and Oppression through Communiction First.
In 2022 she co-authored a policy brief on AI and Accessibility: Jennifer Mankoff, Devva Kasnitz, Disability Studies, L. Jean Camp, Jonathan Lazar, Harry Hochheiser: Areas of Strategic Visibility: Disability Bias in Biometrics.
Her poem can be found in: M. Hofmann, D. Kasnitz, J. Mankoff, C. L. Bennett: Living Disability Theory: Reflections on Access, Research, and Design. ASSETS 2020: 4:1-4:13
In 2016, she released a book, Occupying Disability: Critical Approaches to Community, Justice, and Decolonizing Disability, with P. Block, A. Nishida, and N. Pollard.
Her 10 year impact paper: J. Mankoff, G. R. Hayes, D. Kasnitz: Disability studies as a source of critical inquiry for the field of assistive technology. ASSETS 2010: 3-10
In 2001 she led a special issue of the Disability Studies Quarterly with her longtime collaborator Russell Shuttleworth on engaging anthropology in disability studies.
This article includes excerpts from the Make4All web post, Susan Fitzmaurice’s post on iloveyou-leadon.com, and Kasnitz’s profile on the CUNY website.