March 31st-April 2, 2027
- March 31st and April 1st will take place in New Haven, CT
- April 2nd will be fully online
Crip Translations: Access, Technology, Context
Crip theories remind us that, long before the AI industry raced to monetize multimodal machine learning tools, people with disabilities used hacking and “crip technoscience” (Hamraie and Fritsch, 2019) to turn images or sounds into texts—and vice versa. Blind people have long relied on audio descriptions (AD) that translate visual information into sonic data, while Deaf and hard-of-hearing people have been employing sign language or captioning to translate sonic information into textual or embodied language. If machine learning models transform text into images or video renderings in ways that invoke magic—instantly, cheaply, and mysteriously—AD, alt text, and closed captions have historically required intense human labor.
Bearing these histories in mind, what interventions can crip perspectives from scholars, activists, access workers, and artists offer to current debates on accessibility, technology, and disability identity? The 6th annual Yale Symposium on Accessibility and Disability invites us to explore how those in and outside the disability community communicate, navigate, and make legible or illegible their and others’ bodies, experiences, and expectations across media, location, and time.