Collective Disability Justice Focused Tech

In the 504 Sit-In, the activist organizations Mission Rebels, Black Panthers, American Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities and the Center for Independent Living Activists came together to perform a sit-in to get the 504 regulation signed, paving the way for the landmark passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. During this sit-in, disabled activists inside of the occupied building in San Francisco prototyped a fridge on the spot using an air conditioning unit and a cardboard box to keep medicine cool for disabled protesters.

What gets to be called technology, and what counts as technical creativity? What kind of technovernacular creativity does not get to be called technology because anti-racist disability justice-focused communities perform it? What kind of technological worldings can be enacted by communities for communities?

This conversation between Ren Loren Britton, Robel Afeworki Abay, and Pernilla Manjula Philip shares the ways in which disability refigures the terms of technology based on how (his - her - hir)storically disabled people have hacked and prototyped technologies on the spot (and over time) to make situations work for them. Together, they critique the way ableist white supremacy devalues these technologies and how technoableism furthers ideas perpetuating technology as though disabled, queer, racialised, and neurodivergent people don’t know what we need. This panel holds space for collective disability focused tech practices to shape differently who has agency in tech development.
To watch the conversation from January 2025 the link is: transmediale.de/en/event/collective-disability-justice-focused-tech.