Equity, Access and Inclusion: A World Usability Day Event Schedule
Thursday, November 8, 2018
Featured Speakers and Events:
9:00 Check in table on 2nd floor of Memorial Union outside the Spirit Room
9:00 Continental Breakfast, Bangor Room Memorial Union
9:30 Opening and Welcome by Dr. Robert Dana, Bangor Room Memorial Union
10:00 Keynote Speaker Dr. Kelly Nye-Lengerman, Bangor Room Memorial Union
11:00 Concurrent sessions 1
12:00 Lunch on your own
1:00 Concurrent sessions 2
2:00 Concurrent sessions 3
3:00 Concurrent sessions 4
Rooms for Concurrent Sessions:
- Bumps Room, 2nd Floor Memorial Union
- COE Room, 2nd Floor Memorial Union
- Walker Room, 3rd Floor Memorial Union
- VEMI Lab, Carnegie Hall
Welcome and Remarks – Dr Robert Dana, UMaine Vice President of Student Life. Refreshments provided.
Keynote, Tapping into Potential with Expectations: Making Employment and Post-Secondary Education the New Norm for Individuals with Disabilities – Dr. Kelly Nye-Lengerman, PhD, MSW, LGSW
Education and employment are the building blocks of independence, financial well-being, and valued social roles in today’s society. Yet people with disabilities experience lower graduation, employment, and post-secondary education outcomes. This session will explore and discuss the importance of, and investment in post-secondary education and employment pathways for people with disabilities, including those with significant disabilities. In creating a new normal, where individuals, regardless of disability, can experience the social, emotional, financial, and cultural benefits of being included in post-secondary education and employment, we start with expectations.
Sponsored by the UM Center for Community Inclusion and Disability Studies https://ccids.umaine.edu/
Accessibility, Diversity, and Inclusion – Walker Room 3rd floor Union – Silvestre Guzmán Director – UMaine Office of Multicultural Student Life & Rainbow Resource Center
Breaking Down Classroom Barriers: Supporting Students with Autism at UMaine, Bumps Room – Brooklin Jones, Sarah Howorth, & Deborah Rook-Ellis – Maine Autism Institute for Education and Research (MAIER) at the University of Maine
Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) seeking postsecondary opportunities presents new challenges for professors and university programs in regards to accounting for these students in their curriculum planning, classroom structure, and providing supports in their instruction. The Maine Autism Institute for Research and Education (MAIER) has been providing resources and support for education professionals throughout the state of Maine for 4 years, assisting teams of teachers and administrators in raising awareness, collaborating across disciplines, and implementing strategies designed to assist students with ASD in their classrooms. At the University level, these strategies can also be used to provide students with ASD more support. This presentation will be an overview of the resources available through MAIER, including a brief website tutorial, and an introduction to identified Evidence Based Practices for students with ASD at the college level
Creating a Culture of Access, Bumps Room – Joanna Benica, University of Southern Maine Disability Services Center
Educational access is the provision of classroom accommodations, auxiliary aids and services to ensure equal educational opportunities for all students regardless of disability. This requires a collaborative effort between the student, the faculty member and disability services professionals. This session will focus on what disability services professionals want faculty to know about their rights and responsibilities, how disability services professional can help facilitate access for a student, and best practices in and out of the classroom to support a variety of learners. This session will offer practical suggestions on ways to improve accessibility in the classroom and beyond.
Building Accessible Classes, Bumps Room – Karen Pelletreau, UM Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning.
Drawing from the recent book “Online Teaching at its Best” written by Linda B. Nilson and Ludwika A. Goodson, this workshop will outline why creating accessible course materials will benefit all students in your class regardless of if you teach face to face, hybrid or fully online. This workshop aims to shift thinking about accessible content from something faculty “should” do, to something you want to do to improve learning for all students. We will review Nilson and Goodson’s strategies for time saving accessibility design and tools and explore some simple, practical ways to create accessible course materials.
Disability and Inclusion: From Awareness to Action, COE Room – Sara Henry, Director, University of Maine Student Accessibility Services
An interactive workshop in which participants will dig into activities and discussions that further knowledge about disability as a social construct and examine our own thoughts and beliefs about disability and difference. We will conclude by considering ways how disability can become more integrated an part of campus diversity efforts.
Mindfulness: practice and theory, COE Room – Joshua Green, University of Maine Counseling Center
In this workshop we will answer questions such as: What is mindfulness? How does it change the brain? What are the benefits? We will also do some practice using a variety of methods.
The 70,273 Project, Tables on 2nd Floor Union outside Spirit Room – Jeanne Hewell-Chambers
Jeanne Hewell-Chambers is the founder of the 70,273 Project. The project commemorates the 70,273 physically and mentally disabled people – men, women, teens, boys, and girls – who were murdered by the Nazis between January 1940 and August 1941. Though they never even laid eyes on the disabled person they were evaluating, the Nazi doctors read the medical files and, if from the words on the page, the person was deemed “unfit” or an “economic burden on society”, the doctor placed a red X at the bottom of the form. Three doctors were to read each medical file, and when two of them made a red X on the page, the disabled person’s fate was sealed. Most were murdered within hours. Jeanne commemorates these 70,273 voiceless, powerless people who were so callously and casually murdered by gathering 70,273 blocks of white fabric (representing innocence and the paper the doctors read), each bearing two red X’s (representing one person), and that she stitches together into quilts. The quilt squares have been made by numerous people all over the world and her quilts travel the world. www.The70273Project.org
Tours of the Virtual Environment and Multimodal Interaction (VEMI) Laboratory with simulation experience, Carnegie Hall – Dr Nicholas Giudice
The VEMI lab is an educational, research, and development facility based on a collaborative model where faculty, undergraduate, and graduate students across more than a dozen disciplines learn about scientific research, creative design, and technical skills using the latest virtual and augmented reality technologies. Their mission is to conduct world-class research and to provide students with the training they need to be leaders in today’s It-workforce or research-driven careers.
Their research addresses:
1) The design and evaluation of cutting-edge information-access technologies to improve environmental awareness, spatial learning, and navigation for people with visual impairments (blind individuals, older adults, and anybody who is visually distracted, such as texting while walking).
2) Studying the human interactions for optimizing the accuracy, efficiency, and safety of autonomous vehicles (the fastest growing, yet least studied class of transportation).
Promoting inclusion through information-access technologies: Where we are and where we need to go, COE Room – Dr. Nicholas A. Giudice, Professor of Spatial Informatics, School of Computing and Information Science, The University of Maine
In this session, we will discuss the current state of the art of information-access technologies, focusing on those relating to visual impairment. We will discuss current trends and practices, as well as ongoing hurtles and pitfalls. Audience participation will be encouraged through an interactive exercise.
The 70,273 Project: A Backstage Pass, Walker Room – Jeanne Hewell-Chambers
What do you do when a big, fat, crazy idea lands on your shoulder and whispers in your ear? You launch it 10 days later . . . before you have time to think yourself out of it. You don’t have to know the first thing about threading a needle as Jeanne gives you a backstage pass to The 70273 Project (a worldwide collaboration through which she gathers 70,273 quilt blocks to commemorate every one of the 70,273 people with disabilities Nazi physicians had murdered between January 1940 and August 1941). She’ll weave together tales of the genesis, history, and evolution of the project with stories about Aktion T4 (the top secret organization responsible for the murders). She’ll take you around the world, showing specific blocks and quilts (via slides or display or both), telling you about the people who made them, the fabrics they used, and why this project resonates so deeply with them. Her tales of The 70273 Project Tribe will restore your faith in humanity. In her own unique way of telling stories that are sometimes difficult (and yet necessary) to hear, Jeanne takes you on a safari of joy and sadness, lightheartedness and reflection, creativity, kindness, and compassion that just might leave you dabbing at your eyes every now and then . . . in a good way.
Test Preparation & Test Strategies – Mary Beth Willett, College Success Programs, University of Maine
This practical workshop is designed to assist students who have difficulty with tests learn strategies that will help them prepare for and take tests and exams.