Remote Access Archive Launch Party

The Remote Access Archive is a crowdsourced, community-based and digital archive. It documents the ways that disabled people and communities have used technology for remote forms of participation, both before and during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. This event includes an overview of remote access, its promises, and frictions, as well as an in-depth exploration of how the Critical Design Lab created the archive.

Register here.

Event is free and open to the public.
Live captions will be provided.
Please email accessibility needs as they relate to this event to msf440@nyu.edu. If requesting ASL, please write by 04/10.

Speakers:

Aimi Hamraie is a disabled designer and researcher based at Vanderbilt University, and director of the Critical Design Lab. They are the author of Building Access: Universal Design and the Politics of Disability (2017).

Kelsie Acton (she/her) is neurodivergent access consultant and researcher with York St John University and the Royal Central School for Speech and Drama. She is a member of the Critical Design Lab, the project manager for the Remote Access Archive, and authored the plainer language versions of Alice Wong’s Year of the Tiger and Disability Intimacy.

[sarah] Cavar is a PhD candidate in Cultural Studies and Science & Technology Studies at UC Davis, where their critical-creative practices concern transMadness, experimental poetics, and generative nonsense. Their scholarship has appeared in or is forthcoming from Kairos, Transgender Studies Quarterly, Disability Studies Quarterly, and elsewhere. Cavar’s debut novel, Failure to Comply (2024), is available from featherproof books. They worked on the Remote Access Archive from 2022 – 2024.

Katie Sullivan is a disabled student and writer and friend (et cetera). She is a research assistant in the Critical Design Lab and the Community Power Lab, researching disability culture and critical health studies, respectively. Sullivan will graduate from Vanderbilt University with an undergraduate degree in English and Medicine, Health, & Society in May 2025. Leisurely pursuits include feeling the sun on her face, plunking out blog posts, making comics, and other things of the crafty-ilk. She worked on the Remote Access Archive 2023 – 2024.

Avianna Miller (she/her/hers) is a chronically ill artist working primarily in photography and video. She is a strong proponent for accessibility in arts and cultural spaces, physical and digital. She received her BA from Drew University in 2023, where she majored in Studio Art and Media & Communications. Miller’s work has been included in shows at Drew University, Circle Contemporary, Dyer Arts Center, Temple University, and published by the Guggenheim Museum. She worked on the Remote Access Archive from 2023 – 2024.

Martina Svyantek finished her individualized, interdisciplinary PhD at Virginia Tech in 2021, with a research focus on policy and procedure documents related to Disability at three U.S. institutions of higher education over a 25-year time frame. She has over five years of experience advocating for and promoting accessibility in real-time physical spaces as well as in digital and asynchronous situations. Martina served as the Assistive Technology Specialist in SDAC for three years before her transition into her role as the Strategic Initiatives and Accessible Technology Manager. She is now responsible for integrating research and best practices for the strategic leadership of departmental and institutional initiatives seeking the betterment of disability inclusion at the University of Virginia. She worked on the Remote Access Archive from 2023 – 2024.

Critical Design Lab is on Instagram and Bluesky.