Dis/Usability is a monthly cross-disciplinary speaker and workshop series at the intersection between technology and disability justice. This month’s speaker is Professor Alison Harvey from York University, who will be presenting participatory action research on inclusion and discussing the disconnect between problems with EDI and the solutions proposed.
Talk description: Exclusion and marginalization in creative technology industries — sectors of production that combine media, design, and technology, including video games, animation, and visual effects — has been well-documented. Employers, advocacy groups, researchers, and community organizations have implemented various initiatives to combat exclusion, since the marginalization of diverse individuals from these sectors has implications for equitable access to jobs and advancement, and also for embedding inequities in the design of technological devices, systems, and creative products. Strategies to incorporate equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in these sectors include a range of ‘solutions’ to exclusion, including educational initiatives, funding support, networking, role model initiatives, and mentorship programs.
However, despite decades-long concerns over the ‘pipeline’ of women into education and work in a range of STEM fields and promotion of mentorship as a key EDI tactic, there has been little critical analysis of the realities of marginalized people in these contexts of education, training, and mentorship, so vital to ‘getting in’ and ‘staying in’. This seminar talk provides a review of three related qualitative projects that have considered the lived experiences of historically excluded groups and their reflections on higher education, training and development schemes, networking, and mentorship initiatives. What these projects entailing over 120 interviews with students and professionals in a range of creative technology fields reveal is the ways that EDI solutionism can sustain exclusion. They also give a sense of the strategies and tactics marginalized individuals engage in to gain access to and remain in these domains. These insights upon a new set of questions beyond recruitment- how can we create spaces of thriving and flourishing in creative work?
Speaker Bio: Prof. Alison Harvey is Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the Communications program at Glendon College, York University. Her research and teaching focuses on issues of inclusivity and accessibility in digital culture, with an emphasis on gender and labour in digital games. She is the author of Gender, Age, and Digital Games in the Domestic Context (2015, Routledge) and Feminist Media Studies (2019, Polity). Her work has also appeared in a range of interdisciplinary journals, including New Media & Society, Games & Culture, International Journal of Cultural Studies, Feminist Media Studies, Information, Communication & Society, Social Media & Society, and Studies in Social Justice.
Time: Friday, October 20, 2023, 2pm – 3pm EDT
Location: This is a hybrid event at the Bissell Building (140 St George St) and on Zoom
Dis/Usability is a collaboration between STREET Lab, the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Unit (EDIU), DSA Accessibility Committee, and MISC Accessibility Interests Working Group at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information.
