Blog

January 26, 2022

Critical Design Lab is honored to have received the 2022 United States Artists fellowship in Media, which will support our continued work in disability culture and design!

January 14, 2021

Kelsie Acton on the practices and artistry of plain language.

August 10, 2020

Announcing the first draft of #EugenicsSyllabus! Please consider teaching about eugenics and its connections to the COVID-19 pandemic in your courses this fall. This crowdsourced syllabus includes over 100 primary and secondary sources, and creative works.

June 2, 2020

Critical Design Lab Statement on Design Commitments to Abolishing White Supremacy.

March 10, 2020

As universities declare class cancelations and mandate a shift to online teaching, instructors have the opportunity to design online course materials to be as accessible as possible from the beginning. This will also ensure that your course materials are accessible moving forward.

November 9, 2018

Critical Design Lab director Aimi Hamraie publishes “A Smart City is an Accessible City” in The Atlantic.

October 22, 2018

CDL member Alessandra Pearson shares her critical design project, Sphere of Sound, which explores sound as a multi-sensory experience .

October 15, 2018

CDL member Rebecca Rahimi meditates on a new art project in which she curates objects for elders with memory loss.

October 8, 2018

CDL member Cassandra Hartblay reflects on the values and priorities assigned to assistive technologies, coining the term "criptic innovation," to describe "design innovations that a crip user immediately sees as privileging ableist values over others."

September 24, 2018

CDL member Alessandra Pearson shares her thoughts on the process of designing a project on the accessibility of cultural spaces, including how accessibility mapping methodologies and specific digital tools can inform ways of thinking about accessibility as a right and obligation of public amenities.

September 13, 2018

CDL members engage in regular, structured co-mentorship, with members pairing off to discuss and workshop projects every two weeks. We do this to distribute expertise and power, share unlikely skills, and theorize new possibilities for academic work. CDL member Maggie Mang reflects on a recent co-mentoring experience with artist-in-residence Kevin Gotkin, which offered her the opportunity to dabble with coding in Max7 as she worked through a project on crip time.

September 10, 2018

CDL member Cassandra Hartblay discusses new work in design ethnography, including her co-edited series, Keywords in Ethnography and Design.

September 3, 2018

Critical Design Lab director Aimi Hamraie meditates on the uses of "protocols" for destabilizing the typical "checklist"-style approach to accessibility.