Kristen Shinohara successfully defended her dissertation titled, Design for Social Accessibility: Incorporating Social Factors in the Design of Accessible Technologies! Her topic of Social Accessibility is a concept she initiated that examines how to effectively incorporate social factors into user-centered design techniques toward promoting diversity in design thinking. Congratulations, Kristen! Thanks also to her Supervisory Committee: Jacob O. Wobbrock (Co-Chair), Wanda Pratt (Co-Chair), Richard E. Ladner (GSR), David Hendry and Clayton Lewis. ... Liz Mills had the following two submissions accepted to the IDC 2017 Workshop on Equity & Inclusivity Workshop, to be held in Stanford, California on June 27th, 2017: To Design Inclusive Storytimes: An exploration of reflection in the work of children's librarians; and Kids' Inclusive and Diverse Media Action Project (KIDMAP), co-authored with Briana Ellerbe, PhD Student at the University of Southern California (USC) Annenberg. ... Ricardo Gomez has terrific news: Along with Megan Carney, Katharyne Mitchell, and Sara Vannini, he published Sanctuary Planet: A Global Sanctuary Movement for the Time of Trump in Society and Space. This essay is the result of a Collaboration Studio Grant funded by the Simpson Center for the Humanities for 2016-17. He also published a new book titled Living Fully Among Tseltal Mayan Communities in Chiapas. The book was written in three languages—English, Spanish and Tseltal—and features pictures and stories collected by a group of iSchool graduate students in Chiapas, Mexico. This work represents an ongoing collaboration with One Equal Heart Foundation. It was funded by the iSchool Strategic Research Fund. And he was awarded $1,000 by the Latino Center for Health for his new project titled, Latinx Stories of Migration. During the project he will collect personal stories and photos with Latino and Latina faculty, staff and students at the UW. The project results from the UW LatinX Faculty Recognition Awards this month. ...
From TASCHA: Chris Rothschild, along with Nic Weber and James Long, presented Push, Pull, Spill: Election Data and Citizen Engagement in a Global Context on May 18th at the Global Election Technology Summit. The presentation drew from TASCHA’s Data for Democracy project. Chris Rothschild also participated on the “Leveraging Data for Democracy Around the World,” panel to discuss how data is used to make democracy more open, transparent, and accessible.... Melody Clark, Chris Coward, and Chris Rothschild had a paper accepted to the 2nd AfLIA Conference & 4th Africa Library Summit. Chris Coward presented their paper titled, “Mobile Information Literacy: Building Digital and Information Literacy Skills for Mobile-first and Mobile-centric Populations through Public Libraries,” on May 17th in Cameroon. ... TASCHA hosted a multi-day convening from May 9th to 11th, bringing together library, civic media, civic engagement, and journalism leaders, researchers, and practitioners to discuss how public libraries can be used as a platform for civic engagement. TASCHA, along with several partners and iSchool faculty, will continue to work in this space. More to come soon!