A New Minor is Major News for Students Seeking to Put Technology in Service to Society

Starting this fall, aspiring engineers at Tandon have the option of earning a minor in Disabilities Studies, thanks to a new multi-school interdisciplinary program intended to educate them about the historical, social, and legal circumstances that shape the experience of disability — and help them discover ways in which they can put their engineering knowledge to use in the field. Understanding the issues faced by the well over 50 million people living with disabilities in the U.S. alone will enable engineers to design new assistive technology and incorporate accessibility into all their products and services.

“At many other schools, Disabilities Studies programs are dominated by the humanities, but here at NYU, technology, which drives innovation and problem-solving in so many fields, is the driving force,” Professor Faye Ginsburg, one of the prime figures behind the establishment of the minor, asserts.

Allan Goldstein, a senior lecturer in the Department of Technology, Culture and Society at Tandon and another pivotal figure in the establishment of the minor, concurs. “We don’t want to just train better engineers, we want to create better citizens,” he says. “People can sometimes be afraid of difference, but people with disabilities are not different — they are just living differently, and an engineer with an understanding and awareness of that can make an enormous impact.”

Explaining the multidisciplinary focus that pervades her courses and others in the program, artist and NYU faculty member Marianne Petit says, “We want to put technologists, designers, practitioners, and users in the same room, so that they can share a vocabulary, communicate, and collaborate.”

The minor, which is based at Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development but open to students from across NYU, requires 16 credits — typically earned with one core course and three electives (such as Disability and Sexuality in American Culture or Disability in a Global Context).

One core course — Disability, Technology and Media — is taught by Mara Mills, an Assistant Professor of Media, Culture and Communication at Steinhardt and another of those who spearheaded the new program. She focuses on the significance of technology to the definition and experience of disability; biomedical technology and the establishment of norms; inclusive architecture and design; and more. Another course — simply known as Disability Studies — is taught by Goldstein, whose focus is on dynamically engaging students in the world of disability with project-based experiential learning. Through partnerships with United Cerebral Palsy of New York City and HeartShare, students who enroll in the course interact with consultants living with disabilities, and together they prepare digital projects that examine the issues surrounding disability with subtlety and nuance. Consultants return for multiple semesters, assisting Goldstein as teachers. “Many participating Tandon students have never had a relationship with a person with disabilities, so this course changes lives,” he says. (See below for information on a film made about his students’ work.)

Kristen Casano (right) and her Disability Studies course consultant, Annie

Students who have taken those courses in the past strongly agree with that assessment. Kristen Casano, who earned her undergraduate degree in Science and Technology Studies at Tandon, is currently pursuing her master’s degree in Higher Education and Student Affairs at Steinhardt; she is interested in analyzing disability studies within higher education, largely because of what she learned in classes with Goldstein and Mills. “I wish there had been an official minor during my undergraduate years; I would have definitely pursued it,” she says. “Something that really resonated with me is the fact that we are all only temporarily able-bodied; we don’t know what the future holds, so it’s imperative that we don’t take anything for granted. This field of study has universal applicability and importance.”   

Moulay Senoussi, another Tandon alum, credits Goldstein’s class with eliminating any uncertainty or discomfort he might have felt towards working with those with impairments. “I saw that interactions didn’t have to be complicated or delicate,” he recalls. “They’re just like any other interactions I have on a daily basis.” Today, Senoussi is running his own nonprofit organization in Morocco, which provides wheelchairs and other needed supplies for families there and says, “Disability Studies helped me focus the goals for my organization and work towards meeting them.”

A third core course, Disability Worlds: Anthropological Perspectives, will be co-taught by Ginsburg, also a leader in the establishment of NYU’s Council for the Study of Disability, which was founded in 2007 and whose participants now include members from across all of the schools and departments at the university. The Council’s goals are to further the teaching of and research on issues of disability; to increase the awareness of disability on campus through the development of courses and public events with scholars, activists, artists, and filmmakers; and to ensure that NYU’s built environment and support services make it a disability-friendly place.

If engineers — known for devising practical solutions to pressing societal problems — do so with the empathy and understanding engendered by the new minor, the entire world could soon be more disability-friendly.

Learn more about the Disability Studies Minor

Lights, Camera, Action

Goldstein’s class is the subject of a recent documentary, The Ability Exchange, by NYU alum Bing Wang, which took top honors in the 2016 Spotlight Documentary Film Awards and which IndieWire called “an empathy engine.” For more information and to find out where you can view the movie (including a screening and panel discussion in Brooklyn on September 29 at the Bushwick Film Festival sponsored by the NYU Tandon School of Engineering), visit www.theabilityexchange.com.

This is not the first time Goldstein has landed on the big screen. In 2011 a short documentary, Finding Fred, was released, examining the close relationship between Goldstein and his disabled brother, who had spent decades at New York’s infamous Willowbrook State School before it was shuttered. 

Of The Ability Exchange he says, “Audiences will see people without disability coming to terms with the fact that all people are people first — that people with disabilities want everything all people want — work and love. Audiences will come up with the same conclusion — we are all variations on the theme of being human.”

Bing Wang hopes the film will have a global impact. “I was born and raised in China where general views of those with disabilities are even more outdated and problematic than they are in the United States,” he explained. “I have been somewhat successful in introducing the project and its concepts to a number of people in my home country, and I hope that it can help to influence a sociocultural shift in respect to those issues.”

Kids with Unlimited Potential

One of the big winners in last year’s ConnectAbility Challenge was the Laugh Out Loud Aid (LOLA), which was conceived by Seth Truman, a teen with Asperger’s who attends workshops at Tech Kids Unlimited.

TKU, as it is known, was among the founding groups involved in launching the Ability Project. The brainchild of Beth Rosenberg (a professor in Tandon’s Integrated Digital Media program and a key member of the NYU Ability Project) and her son, Jack, TKU is tackling the mission of teaching 21st-century tech skills like coding and game design to young people with autism spectrum disorder, learning and emotional disabilities, processing problems, and other such issues.

“We want our kids to be innovators and creators of technology,” Rosenberg says. “Not just consumers of it.”

Learn more at www.techkidsunlimited.org

An Award-Winning Project

NYU’s Ability Project was spearheaded in 2013 as an interdisciplinary research space dedicated to the intersection between disability and technology — and to providing a creative and encouraging place for innovators of all abilities. Bringing together assistive technology and adaptive design research initiatives from across NYU, it is home to some of the most exciting work being done at Tandon (with research on stroke rehabilitation and accessibility software being done by Luke DuBois, who is widely credited with introducing the Tandon community to the importance of Disabilities Studies), Tisch and NYU Shanghai (where Marianne Petit is focusing on the development of assistive technologies), and Steinhardt (where Anita Perr is encouraging occupational therapy students to explore the best ways to approach clinically relevant issues).

In August 2016, the Ability Project was the recipient of a prestigious Sapolin Award from the New York City Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities. The office praised the Project’s role in leading the 2015 AT&T ConnectAbility Challenge, which spurred the development of dozens of software, wearable, and other technology solutions aimed at enhancing the lives of people with disabilities, as well as its innovative research initiatives and classes — including one that centered on vision-related assistive tech.

In a citation signed by Mayor Bill de Blasio, the Project was applauded for developing accessible, assistive, and rehabilitative technologies that support and empower users and for its dedication to building a more equitable and inclusive future for all New Yorkers.

 

A student with special needs advances his technology skills with TechKids Unlimited