SATURDAY June 28, 2003
1:30-3:00pm
Linsly-Chittenden Hall, 62
High St., New Haven CT
"Disability and Transhumanism"
Andrew Ward
Ph.D., M.P.H.
and Paul Baker Ph.D.
Philosophy, Science and Technology Program
Georgia Tech
"Strategies
for Workplace Disability Integration: a New Model of Universal
Access"
Current
strategies for workplace accommodation either make use of specialized
assistive technologies or, more recently, environments designed to
permit "universal" access and use. Both strategies have
serious limitations. A more robust strategy expands design
considerations from the external environment to a reconfiguration of the
users of and within that environment.
Andrew
Ward is an Associate Professor in the School of Public Policy at
Georgia Institute of Technology, the Director of the "Policy
Initiatives to Support Workplace Accommodations" portion of the
RERC on Workplace Accommodations, the Director of the Georgia Tech's
"Philosophy, Science and Technology Program", and a faculty
member of Georgia Tech's Cognitive Science Program. Prior to coming to
Georgia Tech, Ward was a faculty member at schools such as the
University of Minnesota and San Jose State University, and was a
Research Fellow in the Institute for Advanced Studies of the Humanities
at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.
Paul
M.A. Baker is Associate Director of Policy Research, Georgia Centers
for Advanced Telecommunications Technology (GCATT), a Project Director
for the Policy Research Initiative of the Rehabilitation Engineering
Research Center on Mobile Wireless Technologies for Persons with
Disabilities (Wireless RERC); and a Project Director on the Workplace
Accommodations RERC. His research is in the area of information and
communication technology policy and the use of technology in the public
sector. He is also an adjunct Associate Professor, School of Public
Policy, Georgia Tech; and an Affiliate Professor with the School of
Public Policy, George Mason University.
Barbara
Gibson MS, PT
Dept. of Phys. Therapy, U. of Toronto
"Identity
Experiments: The Connectivity of Disability"
Through
a discussion of disability experience and the intimate connections
between humans, technologies and the environment, this presentation will
draw on the work of Deleuze and Guattari to explore the fluid and
contestable boundaries of human identity.
Barbara
Gibson is a physical therapist and lecturer in bioethics in the
Department of Physical Therapy at the University of Toronto. She
completed her Masters of Science in the Collaborative Program in
Bioethics at the University of Toronto where she explored physicians'
attitudes and practices towards long-term ventilation for young men with
muscular dystrophy. Currently she is a Canadian Institutes of Health
Research PhD fellow in Health Care, Technology and Place at the
University of Toronto, where she is conducting an ethnographic study of
young men with disabilities who use ventilators.
