The Diversity Council, Office of DEI, CEP, and CARDS are excited to invite all Barnard community members to the fourth annual Accessibility Week, which will take place from March 4-8, 2024. Accessibility is everyone's responsibility, and Accessibility Week is a week of community-wide programming focused on disability inclusion and social justice.
Please check out our Disability and Access website for more resources including an intro guide on Digital Accessibility by Elana Altman (IMATS).
Find out about our exciting programming below and RSVP to any or all the week's events via this link.
Special thanks to our partners: BLAIS, IMATS, and Health & Wellness
Disability Employee Resource Group and Student Mixer:
Monday, March 4th: 12PM -2:00 PM Judith Shapiro Faculty Room, 2nd floor, Diana
This event is for students who identify as part of the disability community to connect and mingle with the Barnard Disability Employee Resource Group (ERG) members. Please come out to meet new people and celebrate the start of Accessibility Week!
Lunch will be provided.
Disability (Research) Salon:
Tuesday, March 5th 4:30 PM- 6 PM, On-campus, Location TBD
Join us for the Disability (Research) Salon during Accessibility Week, the week of March 4th! Students will have the opportunity to present research or theses related to disability studies or lived experiences with disability/chronic illness and then engage in discussion with the community.
Opening remarks and facilitation will be provided by Prof Mara Green, Anthropology and instructor of the Disability course taught in the Fall 2023 Semester.
Refreshments will be provided.
CARDS Student Social/Field Day:
Wednesday, March 6th 5:30-7:30 PM, Location TBD
Have a Field Day with CARDS!
Students are invited to our 2nd Field Day event - we’ll have tie-dye, games, snacks, boba tea, and games with prizes. Join us as we celebrate disabled joy together! If you have any questions please reach out to cards@barnard.edu
Keynote with Sarah E. Silverman, An Introduction to Neurodiversity for Educators: Key Terms, History, and Politics:
Thursday, March 7th 5:30-7 PM, MLC LL002
Neurodiversity, or the naturally occurring variation in human cognition, is becoming a popular topic in higher education and adjacent fields as more of our students identify as “neurodivergent” and neurodiversity gains recognition as an important component of DEI initiatives. But what is neurodiversity, and what is the history and political importance of this concept? This workshop will introduce educators to the basic terminology of the Neurodiversity paradigm (including the terms “neurodivergent” and “neurotypical”) as well as the history of Neurodiversity as a social justice movement with roots in the Autism rights movement. With connections to the broader disability rights and justice movement as well as psychiatric survivors and Mad Pride movements, Neurodiversity challenges our fundamental assumptions about normality. Participants will explore this history and its implications for educators through an interactive lecture followed by discussion, with opportunities to participate verbally and non-verbally.
Food will be provided.
Friday, March 8th:
Academic integrity and access without surveillance: Strategies to reduce the harms of academic surveillance technologies.
Faculty workshop. 10 AM -11:45 AM, On-campus, Location TBD
Remote proctoring and other academic surveillance technologies sell themselves as “academic integrity” tools. When we look more closely at these products, we see how they compromise relationships between students and instructors by encouraging a “pedagogy of suspicion” and rely on difference as a proxy for wrongdoing, leading many instructors to avoid them.
However, decisions surrounding academic integrity and technology are never simple: Low-tech options like pen and paper exams present fewer academic integrity concerns, but increased accessibility concerns and potentially increased need for accommodations. Students often have academic integrity concerns that are not addressed in instructors’ rejection of proctoring.
Participants in this workshop first review some of the documented harms of surveillance technologies like remote proctoring and plagiarism/AI detection to individual students, the classroom community, and to educational institutions.
Then, participants will consider case studies that involve academic integrity, technology, and accessibility using two tools: (1) The “fundamental values of academic integrity” offered by the International Center for Academic Integrity (honesty, trust, fairness, respect, responsibility, and courage) and (2) the framework of “harm reduction,” which aims to help learning communities avoid the worst harms of surveillance technologies while balancing other legitimate needs. Participants will be encouraged to share their own experiences related to assessment, academic integrity, and accessibility throughout the workshop, and will come away with nuanced strategies to navigate these issues in the future.
Light refreshments will be provided.
Speaker Bio
Sarah Silverman, PhD (she/her) is an educator focusing on disability studies, pedagogy, and educational technology. Her interests include accessible and feminist pedagogy, Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and disability-informed critiques of educational technology. As an autistic educator, she has a personal stake in Neurodiversity as well as extensive college teaching and faculty development experience. As a critic of academic surveillance technology, she combines her interests in disability studies and instructional design to advocate for accessibility and privacy in higher education. Her writings appear in To Improve the Academy, the Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, the blog Feminist Pedagogy for Teaching Online, New Directions for Teaching and Learning, and on her blog at www.sarahemilysilverman.com.