Welcome to the website and homepage of Technology & Disability.
This webpage reflects content and themes from “Technology and Disability” at Virginia Tech, a course developed by Dr. Ashley Shew, as well as work on an NSF-funded CAREER Project on”Disability, Experience, and Technological Imagination” (#1750260), running from July 2018 to August 2023. Our team curates information for our and other classrooms about the lived experience of disability in the context of media and design narratives that feature disabled bodies and minds.
We’re engaging in humanities research related to how disabled people describe their experience and lives in relationship to technologies. This work finds its way in classroom materials and website content, a trade publication entitled Against Technoableism by Ashley Shew (2023), an open education textbook on Technology and Disability edited by Hanna Herdegen and Ashley Shew (coming out in late 2023).
We’re also sharing information about our new Andrew W. Mellon grant called “Just Dis Tech,” which runs 2023-2025 and provides support for disability-forward research consulting, regional events and performances, and disability community-centered gaming. We are forming a Disability Community Technology Center (DisCoTec!) through this grant, and we’ll be sharing a lot more on this soon!
About this Page:
On this page, you can find:
- information about past runs Technology & Disability class,
- information about Dr. Shew’s research program and publications,
- information from research team members, and
- links to other wonderful course sites and blogs related to disability (some amazing stuff out there)
- updates and blog posts related to disability-forward research.
If you have any queries, please email shew@vt.edu.
Technology and Disability 