Building a Remote Work Toolkit and Panel Opportunity

Building upon the Archivists at Home remote work advocacy document, the SAA Accessibility & Disability Section is building a remote work toolkit to continue to advance hybrid or fully remote archival work options. With the COVID-19 pandemic, many jobs transitioned at some point to remote work and the Section continues to advocate for the continued adoption of this work approach.

The benefits of remote work, particularly for archival workers with disabilities, can be truly transformational. Whether it is flexible work hours or personal control over work environment and set up, remote work can be beneficial for both employees and employers. For employers, remote work allows for a wider and more diverse job pool, regardless of geographic location.

The Section has begun compiling examples of remote work job descriptions and remote work policies. Would you like to help us build this toolkit? Volunteer for the team or please send along helpful resources! Contact us at SAAdisabilityarchivists@gmail.com or on Twitter @SAA_ADS.

Additionally, we are also seeking participants for a panel discussion in October for National Disability Employment Awareness Month on the intersection of archival work, disability, and remote work. If you’re interested in participating, submit this form by Monday August 29th.

Join the Accessibility & Disability Section blog editorial team!

Hello, everyone!

Are you passionate about accessibility and disability in archives? Do you love creating and sharing resources? The SAA Accessibility & Disability Section is recruiting for our section blog’s editorial team!

The editorial team develops, cultivates, and publishes content relevant to accessibility and disability in the archives through our section blog. We welcome all ideas for maintaining a thoughtful, creative, and rich blog presence. Some ideas might include event and resource roundups, member spotlights, allyship, and self-advocacy tips.

This role would be an ex-officio role with the ADS steering committee. The term would be effective through August 2023 and is eligible for renewal. We welcome any current SAA members to apply. If you are interested, please email us at SAAdisabilityarchivists@gmail.com by April 16 with a brief note about yourself and what you would like to see the ADS blog cover over the year.

Seeking volunteers: QA reviewers for SAA Education webinar captions

In 2021, the Accessibility & Disability Steering Committee received a SAA Foundation grant to caption pre-2020 SAA Education courses using the Rev transcription service. We are recruiting volunteers to help with the transcription quality assurance!

If you would like to help us, please fill out this form. Volunteers would be trained by the project coordinator Lydia Tang on how to review and correct captions within the Rev interface. Volunteers need to be a member of the Society of American Archivists. In addition to being able to access the course recording during the QA process, volunteers who would like to get credit toward the DAS Certificate will be able to purchase access to up to 5 course exams at a rate of $40 per exam. For questions about this project, please contact Lydia Tang (lydia.tang@lyrasis.org) and/or SAA Director of Education Rana Salzmann (rsalzmann@archivists.org)

DEADLINE EXTENDED 4/1: Call for Abstracts – Preserving Disability: Disability and the Archival Profession (Litwin Books)

Call for Abstracts – Preserving Disability: Disability and the Archival Profession (Litwin Books)
Edited by Gracen Brilmyer and Lydia Tang

Key Details:
– Abstracts due: EXTENDED to April 1, 2022 Submit your abstract proposal
– Invitations to submit full papers: April 15, 2022
– Full papers due: August 1, 2022
– Estimated publication: September 2023

Looking for collaborators? Contribute your ideas and connect with others on our brainstorming document

Questions for the editors? Contact Gracen Brilmyer & Lydia Tang

We are inviting contributions from disabled archivists and disabled archival users to bring critical perspectives and approaches to the archival profession for a forthcoming book, Preserving Disability: Disability and the Archival Profession (to be published by Litwin Books). This book aims to address disability, ableism, and accessibility as they intersect with the archival profession-through collection development, archival labor, and accessing historical records.

The deadline has been extended to expand representation of ideas and identities within the book. We particularly encourage contributions from disabled people of color.

We are especially are seeking submissions that address:

– Disability collection appraisal, acquisition, description, and preservation that explicitly addresses the nuances of archival theory and practice
– Surfacing disabled narratives in community-based archives that focus on other identities
– Post-custodial practices around disability collections
– Community archives, post-custodial practices, and/or reparative work
– Disability community engagement: creating and sustaining relationships with donors, creators, and community members for historical documentation, events, and outreach
– Funding and fundraising around disability and accessibility
– Navigating challenges with privacy and access for disability collections

Contributions could also address topics including:

– Historical overviews of disability and/or accessibility in the archival field and profession
– Overviews of accessibility, legal regulations, standards, and best practices across different types of archives-community, university, government, corporate, etc.
– Critiques of standards and policies that emphasize legal compliance over actual users
– Disabled users’ experiences of accessibility or inaccessibility of digital and/or physical spaces, archival content, and services
– Calls to action for archives to better support disabled archivists, users, and disability-related collections

Call for Abstracts – Preserving Disability: Disability and the Archival Profession (Litwin Books)

Edited by: Gracen Brilmyer and Lydia Tang

Submission form: Please submit your abstract and author details

Looking for collaborators? Contribute your ideas and connect with others on our brainstorming document

Questions for the editors? Contact Gracen Brilmyer & Lydia Tang

Key Points:

– Abstracts due: February 19, 2022

– Invitations to submit full papers: March 1, 2022

– Full papers due: July 1, 2022

– Estimated publication date: September 2023

We are inviting contributions from disabled archivists and disabled archival users to bring critical perspectives and approaches to the archival profession for a forthcoming book, Preserving Disability: Disability and the Archival Profession (to be published by Litwin Books). This book aims to explicitly address disability, ableism, and accessibility as they intersect with the archival profession—through collection development, archival labor, and accessing historical records. We seek submissions that cover topics including but not limited to:

Historical overviews of disability and/or accessibility in the archival field and profession
Overviews of accessibility, legal regulations, standards, and best practices across different types of archives—community, university, government, corporate, etc.
Critiques of standards and initiatives that emphasize legal compliance over actual users
First-person experiences from disabled archivists or users working with disability collections and connecting with the past
Disabled archivists experiences in the workplace: job requirements, disclosure, accommodations, self-advocacy, and ableism
Professional values, ableist expectations, and job precarity for disabled archivists (for tenure, promotions, contract renewal, etc.)
Funding and fundraising around disability and accessibility
Disability collection appraisal, acquisition, description, and preservation
Archival absences in collections and the evolving concept of who and what is worthy of remembrance
Navigating challenges with privacy and access for disability collections
Disabled users’ experiences of accessibility or inaccessibility of digital and/or physical spaces, archival content, and services
Gatekeeping and stigmatization: the policing of behavior, bodies, and disabled people in reading rooms
Disability community engagement: creating and sustaining relationships with donors, creators, and community members for historical documentation, events, and outreach
Proposals or best practices for disabled leadership and disability-centered hiring, inclusive workplaces, and job models
Calls to action for archives to better support disabled archivists, users, and disability-related collections

We welcome contributions especially from multiply marginalized or minoritized archival workers and users of archives as well as a broad representation of archival repository types. We also actively seek contributors from outside academia who reflect on their experiences in archives.

Abstracts are encouraged to be under 500 words in length.

Please submit your abstract and author details by February 19, 2022.

We are also recruiting peer reviewers for this book. If you wish to be considered as a peer reviewer, please fill out the Peer Reviewer Recruitment form. Possible peer reviewers will be contacted in late spring.

A&DS News and Event Roundup – May 2021

Our monthly “Roundup” series features articles, upcoming events, and other items of interest to Section membership. If you have suggestions for items for next month’s A&DS Roundup, please email us at adsectionblogSAA at gmail dot com.

Call for Papers:

Cripping the Archive: Disability, Power, and History (edited by Jenifer Barclay and Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy)

This collection will explore the relationship between disability and the archive. We envision essays that collectively challenge “compulsory able-bodiedness”/able-mindedness (McRuer, 2006) – the ubiquitous beliefs and practices that center able-bodiedness in service of normativity. We invite contributors to ‘crip’ the archive, to adopt a critical orientation that illuminates and disrupts ableist power structures and dynamics and analyze how ableness informs the politics of the archive as a physical space, a sacred place, a discriminatory record, and a collection of silences. We seek work that uses a wide range of methods from authors who foreground the lived experiences and representations of disability in their work. We also strongly encourage submissions that use intersectional, interdisciplinary, and transnational approaches to the question of disability and the archive. We welcome submissions from scholars, writers, and artists and will accept 300-500-word abstracts for this collection through May 15, 2021.

Topics include, but are not limited to:
●   Objects, museums, curiosities; disability on display
●   The absence of disability in archival finding aids and indexes
●   The paradox of disability as both hypervisible and invisible in the historical record and archival imagination
●   Centering disability in the archives of medicine, science, and technology
●   The accessibility of archival spaces and materials
●   The impact of charged and negative disability terminology in changing historical contexts (i.e. monstrous, mad, deaf and dumb, crippled, superannuated, invalid, retardation)
●   Uncovering forgotten histories of disability in the archive and revisiting familiar archival sources through a disability lens
●   Identifying and confronting archival erasures rooted in intersectionality
●   Disability approaches to digital archives
●   The archive as a space of resistance (i.e. the reclamation of knowledge systems, ontologies, and identities structured by disability)
●   Decolonizing the archive of disability, Eurocentric understandings of the body and disability
●   Disability and the archive in transnational perspective
●   Myths of overcoming and inspirational narratives in the archives
●   The challenges of locating disability in already contested archives (e.g. slavery, colonialism, etc.)

For more information and submission details, see: https://networks.h-net.org/node/73374/announcements/7515044/call-abstracts-edited-volume-cripping-archive-disability-power.

Upcoming Talks and Learning Opportunities:

A&DS + AACS Discussion on Intersectionality

May 6th, 3pm CST

Hosted by the SAA Accessibility and Disability Section and the Archivist and Archives of Color Section, we invite you to an open discussion on cross-section participation, intersectionality, and building resilience as our profession demands more from BIPOCs and those with disabilities. Register here: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAkfuurpjgpHtfLUXJXCSLmFVfdYsOnq6dW.

Midwest Archives Conference presentation on Accessibility

May 13th, 3:30-4:30pm CST

During the Midwest Archives Conference, Lindy Smith, Veronica Denison, Lauren White, and Zachary Tumlin will presenting on “Improving Accessibility in Archival Spaces.” The full conference program is available on the MAC website.

Web Archiving Coffee Chat

May 19th, 6pm EST

Join the Web Archiving Section for a coffee chat co-hosted by the Accessibility & Disability Section (ADS). ADS Immediate Past Chair Lydia Tang will share insights on using a screen reader when viewing the Internet Archive’s user interface and WARCs. We will also hear about her experience using different tools to check for accessibility compliance. Please stay tuned to the Web Archiving Section’s Twitter (https://twitter.com/WebArch_RT) for details.

Accessibility Fundamental Bootcamp Training

May 20th, 12-3pm EST

In honor of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, Deque is offering a free basic accessibility fundamentals bootcamp training session on Thursday, May 20th from 12:00-3:00PM ET.

Articles and Recordings:

Who’s Missing from EDI Advocacy?: Examining the Barriers for Librarians with Invisible Disabilities

A recording and presentation materials from this session, presented at ACRL 2021 by Samantha Huntington Peter, Katelyn Quirin Manwiller, Megan Toops, Debbie Krahmer, and Michele Santamaria, is available online at: https://uwyo.figshare.com/articles/presentation/Who_s_Missing_from_EDI_Advocacy_Examining_the_Barriers_for_Librarians_with_Invisible_Disabilities/14485086/1

College Language Association Journal, special issue on Blackness and Disability

Therí Alyce Pickens guest edited the March 2021 issue of the CLA Journal, which is available online here: https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/44225 . Articles include On Fits, Starts, and Entry Points: The Rise of Black Disability Studies (Anna Hinton), No Crips Allowed: Magical Negroes, Black Superheroes, And the Hyper-Abled Black Male Body In Steven Spielberg’s Amistad and Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther (Charles I. Nero), and Black Autism: A Conversation with Diana Paulin (Julia Miele Rodas and Diana Paulin).

Other Items of Interest:

The Accessibility and Disability Section is looking for candidates interested in running for a position on the A&DS steering committee! Terms are for two years, and you must be a member of both SAA and the A&D Section. Nominations must be received by May 28th, and can be submitted here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd1teS400nf-lv–RkUBnOMsYzFakRcess3yrIgeBJAObvwtQ/viewform

The SAA Mentoring Program is seeking volunteer mentees who may be interested in participating in the pilot Accessibility & Disability cohort program. Cohorts will be active from June – November 2021. Apply to be a Mentee by submitting this application by May 14. If you have any questions about this pilot program, contact the Mentoring Program Subcommittee at saamentoring@gmail.com.

Dr. Lydia Tang, on behalf of the Accessibility & Disability Section, has been awarded a $3,200 SAA Foundation grant to outsource captioning pre-2020 SAA Education webinars. More on this exciting news to come!!

A&DS News and Event Roundup – April 2021

Upcoming Talks and Learning Opportunities:

Webina r : Core Concepts of Accessibility in Archives

Monday, April 26, 2021 from 10am-11am PST

Instructor: Dr. Lydia Tang

Accessibility must be designed into programs and workflows, and there are many ways that archivists can actively improve accessibility for everyone.

The Core Concepts of Accessibility in Archives webinar will include:

An overview of the Society of American Archivists’ Guidelines for Accessible Archives for People with Disabilities
Guidance on how to survey physical and digital spaces for accessibility barriers
Brief demonstration of screen readers accessing digital archival materials and databases
Examples of how these Guidelines can be applied to repositories

The cost is $10 for SCA members; $5 for student members; $20 for non-members; and $5 for unemployed or precariously employed individuals. All registrants will receive a link to the webinar recording after the webinar is completed.

An Afternoon with Keah Brown: Perspectives on the Intersections of Black, Queer, and Disability Identity and Navigating Life as a College Student and Beyond

April 1, 2021 at 4pm PST

Keah Brown is an actress, journalist, author, and screenwriter. She is the creator of #DisabledAndCute. Her work has appeared in Teen Vogue, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, Marie Claire UK, And The New York Times, among other publications. Her Debut essay collection, The Pretty One is out now. Her debut picture book, Sam’s Super Seats will be out in 2022 via Koklia books.

Join the Disability Programs and Resource Center, the Black Unity Center, and DREAM SFSU for this exciting conversation. ASL/captioning provided.

3rd Annual Autism at Work Research Workshop

April 20-22, 2021, 11am-2pm PST (registration deadline: April 9, 2021)

The Autism at Work Research Workshop brings together leading scholars, employers, clinicians, service providers, entrepreneurs, caregivers, and autism advocates concerned with autism employment. Their work may relate to the preparation, recruitment, persistence, advancement, and management of autistic individuals in the workplace. Our objectives are to

Build a community of people concerned with issues related to the preparation and employment of autistic individuals and convey these concerns to the others in the community
Offer opportunities to connect practitioners with researchers to develop or evaluate supports for the employment of autistic individuals
Provide a collaborative space for scholars to share their work and receive constructive feedback in order to advance autism employment research
Further develop a research agenda to advance evidence-based practices to equitably include individuals with autism in the workplace

Microsoft Ability Summit

May 5-6, 2021, 9am-12:30pm PST

The Microsoft Ability Summit is a two-day, free digital event experience that brings together people with disabilities, allies, and accessibility professionals to Imagine, Build, Include, and Empower the future of disability inclusion and accessibility.

2021 Microsoft Ability Summit will feature:

Keynotes from Microsoft executives and notable members of the disability community
Expert panels featuring exciting projects and innovations
Demos of the latest accessibility features in Office, Windows, Xbox, and more
All sessions will be recorded and available post-event so no matter what time zone you are in, you can access the content at a time that works for you!

News and Articles:

“We Need to Talk About How We Talk About Disability: A Critical Quasi-Systematic Review” by Amelia Gibson, Kristen Bowen, and Dana Hanson

“This quasi-systematic review uses a critical disability framework to assess definitions of disability, use of critical disability approaches, and hierarchies of credibility in LIS research between 1978 and 2018. We present quantitative and qualitative findings about trends and gaps in the research, and discuss the importance of critical and justice-based frameworks for continued development of a liberatory LIS theory and practice.”

“Neurodiverse Applicants are Revolutionizing the Hiring Process”, Quartz at Work, Alexandra Ossola

Requires an account with Quartz (free trial is available)

Other Items of Interest:

Call for Fellowship Applications: Jaipreet Virdi 2021 Fellowship for Disability Studies – Medical Heritage Library

The Medical Heritage Library seeks a motivated fellow to assist in the continuing development of our education and outreach programs. Under the guidance of a member of our governance board, the fellow will develop curated collections or sets for the MHL website on the topic of disability and medical technologies. Examples of existing primary source sets can be found on the MHL website: http://www.medicalheritage.org/resource-sets/. These collections will be drawn from the over 300,000 items in our Internet Archive library. The curated collections provide a means for our visitors to discover the richness of MHL materials on a variety of topics relevant to the history of health and the health sciences. As part of this work, the fellow will have an opportunity to enrich metadata in MHL records in Internet Archive to support scholarship and inquiry on this topic.

This paid ($20/hour not to exceed $3000) fellowship will be hosted virtually, with no in-person component. The fellowship will take place anytime between the end of May 2021-mid-August 2021. 150 hours, over 12 weeks with a maximum of 20 hours in any given week. For more details and application instructions, see: http://www.medicalheritage.org/2021/03/11/call-for-fellowship-applications-jaipreet-virdi-2021-fellowship-for-disability-studies/

Western History Disability Studies and Disabled Scholar Award

The purpose of the Western History Disability Studies and Disabled Scholar Award is to promote the place of disability and all of the ramifications that disability, diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion have had in the history of the North American West. It is important to promote and support scholars who study this history, whether these scholars have a disability or not. To read more on the significance and vibrancy of Disability Studies, see Disability Studies and History below.

Two $500 awards, funded by independent blind historian Alida Boorn, will support two graduate student who either are working in the fields of disability studies and western history OR identify as disabled and who wish to attend the WHA conference with financial assistance. Funding from the award will assist their ability to research and present academic papers and network with other scholars at the annual WHA conferences.

Deadline is July 15, 2021. See their website for additional details: https://www.westernhistory.org/awards/disability

“New inclusive feature in Microsoft Teams and More”

This blog post covers new accessibility features in Microsoft Teams, including Dynamic View: “With more important calls, meetings and events happening virtually, it’s important to make sure everyone can participate easily, including people with disabilities. We are happy to announce Dynamic view, which intelligently arranges the elements of your meeting for an optimal viewing experience, is coming soon to Commercial and GCC customers. As people join, turn on video, start to speak, or begin to present in a meeting, Teams auto-adjusts and personalizes your layout. For instance, with Dynamic view, meeting attendees who are deaf can pin a sign language interpreter, fit the interpreter’s video to frame, and see the interpreter alongside shared content throughout the meeting.”

Reminder! Accessibility and Disability Section Mentoring Program

A reminder that the Accessibility and Disability Section sponsors a mentoring program, open to any archival workers and students who share an interest or identity relating to disability and accessibility and an interest in the archival field. You do not need to be a member of SAA to sign up. For more details, including a link to the sign up sheet, please see this previous blog post: https://adsarchivists.home.blog/2020/12/16/introducing-the-accessibility-disability-sections-mentoring-sign-up-sheet/

Introducing the Accessibility & Disability Section’s Mentoring Sign-up Sheet!

The SAA Accessibility & Disability Section Steering Committee is pleased to share this test pilot mentoring sign up sheet. Inspired by the mentoring sign up sheets by DLF and DigiPres, this sign up sheet is a lightweight and flexible tool for facilitating mentoring connections.

Eligibility:

Archival workers and students who share an interest or identity relating to disability and accessibility and an interest in the archival field. You do not need to be a member of SAA to sign up on this sheet.

How it works

Sign up!

Please sign up on this Google sheet. Anyone can volunteer to participate as a mentor or mentee.

Mentors, if you feel that you can work simultaneously with more than one mentee, please duplicate your line.

To support the confidentiality of Mentees, if you see a mentor who you would like to chat with, mark an “X” by your mentor’s line and contact your mentor.

If you have difficulty accessing, editing this form, or encounter other issues, please contact us at adsectionblogsaa@gmail.com

What is the time commitment?

Mentors indicate time commitment capacity on the form. Some may only be able to do a single informational interview while others may be able to meet regularly for an ongoing basis. When you make contact with your mentoring partner, you can establish expectations according to your mentoring needs and personal time commitment capacities.

Disclaimer

While participants do not need to be members of SAA, we expect all participants to adhere to the SAA code of conduct to ensure that this is a welcoming, supporting, and safe experience. If anyone encounters behaviour that violates the SAA code of conduct, please contact us (adsectionblogsaa@gmail.com). Thank you for doing your part to support your colleagues and make this a fun and educational experience!

Accessible Digital Documentary Heritage (UNESCO)

Earlier this month, UNESCO published Accessible Digital Documentary Heritage: Guidelines for the Preparation of Documentary Heritage in Accessible Formats for Persons with Disabilities. This 21-page report focuses on “the right to access to documentary heritage by persons with disabilities.”

As noted in the report’s Forward, written by UNESCO Deputy Director-General Xing Qu, “The advent of digital cultural archives and collections has spurred significant advancement in global access to culture, including through digitization. This has profoundly enhanced our cultural experience, not only in terms of production, dissemination and new technology-based access, but also in terms of participation and creation, as well as learning and participating in knowledge societies. As the UN agency that fosters the creation of knowledge societies that are inclusive, pluralistic, equitable, open and participatory for all, UNESCO believes that the advantages of digitization should be enjoyed equally by persons with disabilities.”

In the report, UNESCO examines the accessibility of its own Memory of the World website. This examination looks at website navigation, colors and contrast, links, images, and forms. Ultimately, the report states “the Memory of the World Register website has some basic accessibility features, nevertheless, the website
itself needs to be re-designed to make it more useable and accessible for people of all abilities, while the website’s content (items in the register, images, documents, etc.) should be adapted with better awareness of digital accessibility issues.” The way in which these components are examined directly connects to the guidelines found in the third section of the report.

In the final section of the report, 14 guidelines are divided into two categories – basic guidelines and advanced guidelines. The basic guidelines include a number of critical overall considerations, such as:

Consider accessibility at every step of document digitization, rather than fixing accessibility issues post hoc.
Plan to allocate sufficient resources for accessibility.
Involve persons with disabilities and/or accessibility experts in the process.

The advanced guidelines focus more on how to make specific types of materials accessible. These include:

Digital images should be accompanied by a text description of their subject’s key features (content and form) and should be captured with the highest resolution possible.
PDF documents should be screen-readable.
Videos should be accompanied by captions or sign language interpretation, as well as audio description.

Overall, this report provides a summary of many issues that inhibit accessibility of digital content. The report – and specifically the case study of the Memory of the World website – provides a solid framework for others wishing to examine their digital collections and web presence to ensure materials are accessible.

A&D Section Roundup – December 2020

The “Roundup” series is published on the first of each month. It features articles, upcoming events, and other items of interest to Section membership. If you have suggestions for items for next month’s A&DS Roundup, please email us at adsectionblogSAA at gmail dot com.

Webinars and other learning opportunities:

In Our Own Words: Deaf Perspectives in Oral History and Public History

Tuesday, December 8, 2020, 6-7pm EST (free, but requires registration)

Sponsored by the National Council on Public History, the Drs. John S. & Betty J. Schuchman Deaf Documentary Center at Gallaudet University, the Public History Program at American University, and the Oral History Association.

This program – a 1 hour Zoom conversation – brings Deaf people into this conversation, both as individuals sharing their experiences and as collaborators throughout the curation/interpretation process. In particular, the panelists will address how oral history interviews should be handled when interviewing Deaf community members. What are some considerations when planning and conducting Deaf oral histories? How can Deaf perspectives, storytelling culture, and interviewing practices push oral history beyond the approaches that bias the hearing/aural? How can oral historians and public historians incorporate or center Deaf narratives in public engagement, particularly when documenting and creating programming about this current moment?

This program is free, but registration is required (click here to register). Please also note the program will be recorded and shared.

Archivists with Disabilities Follow Up

Thursday, December 10, 2020 at 3pm EST (free but requires registration)

The Education Subcommittee of the SAA Accessibility and Disability Section would like to invite you to a follow-up of the SAA Annual Meeting Session “Archivists with Disabilities” on December 10, 3 p.m. EST, 2 p.m. CST. The original panel would like to answer questions that they were unable to during the conference, then have a discussion with the wider audience. We will be using SAA’s Zoom account, which will include closed captioning, however you do not have to be a member of SAA to attend the event. Presenters include Veronica Denison, Michelle Ganz, Chris Tanguay, and Zachary Tumlin. Unfortunately, original panelist, Ann Abney, is unable to attend.

In case you are not a member of SAA, were unable to attend the session, or would like to re-watch the presentation, it is now available for everyone to view. During the presentation, speakers discussed invisible and visible disabilities, adult onset or diagnosis of a disability, disclosing a disability, accommodations, and how to be an ally for your coworkers.

Please note that the event will not be recorded as we want everyone to feel comfortable asking questions and sharing their experiences. You are also welcome to anonymously submit any questions or topics you would like discussed during the event.

If interested, you can register here for this one-hour event. If you have any questions, please email Veronica Denison at vldenison@ksu.edu.

Disclose This! Advancing Disability Awareness in Libraries and Archives (recording)

A recording is now available from the October 16th panel discussion “Disclose This!: Advancing Disability Awareness in Libraries and Archives.” The discussion was hosted by the Archival Workers Emergency Fund, and participants included Jasmine Clark, chair of the DLF Digital Accessibility Working Group; Michelle Ganz, chair of the SAA Accessibility & Disability Section; and Karina Hagelin, activist and organizer. Panelists discussed advancing disability awareness and representation in libraries and archives.

Other Items of Interest:

Call for Volunteers for Appointed Positions in SAA

The Society of American Archivists has issued its official call for volunteers for appointed positions within the organization. If you’re interested, please complete the self-nomination form before January 15, 2021. Additionally, a Q&A forum will be held with SAA VP Courtney Chartier, members of the Appointments Committee, and recent SAA appointed leaders on Wednesday, December 9th at 2pm EST. Register for that session here and learn more about how you can get involved in these types of roles within SAA.

Disability History Association Fall 2020 Conference Award

The Disability History Association invites applications for the Fall 2020 Conference Award. This award is intended to help cover costs for conferences attended between October 1, 2020 and March 31, 2021. This award is open to graduate students and contingent faculty, as well as underemployed, unemployed, or community-based scholars and artists. The DHA is particularly interested in supporting those who will receive limited or no support from other sources, including their home institutions. Applicants must be presenting on a topic directly related to disability history at a conference occurring between October 1, 2020 and March 31, 2021. Eligible conferences may be either in-person or virtual. The award may cover travel, registration, or the cost of academic memberships required to attend the conference. Depending on demand, demonstrated need, and the availability of funds, award amounts may range from $100 to $300.

Applicants must write a letter of between 1-2 pages describing what conference they will be attending, the nature of their participation in the conference, and the significance of conference attendance for their career and the advancement of the field. They should also include a brief budget indicating expected costs, and how the award will help them cover these costs. If they are applying for or have received other funds to help defray the cost of attendance, applicants should indicate this in either their letter or budget.

Please submit applications to Dr. Caroline Lieffers at clieffers@gmail.com by December 15, 2020.

Library Juice Certificate in Disability Access and Inclusion

Library Juice Academy is now offering a Certificate in Disability Access and Inclusion which will “develop your understanding of accessibility and disability, and provide you with practices to proactively include and equitably serve patrons and staff with a range of disabilities.” You can learn more about the classes offered and the certificate program on their website: https://libraryjuiceacademy.com/certificate/disability-access-and-inclusion/.

Call for Program Proposals for 2021 SAA Annual Meeting

The SAA Program Committee invites proposals for sessions to be presented at the 2021 Annual Meeting. As you develop your session proposal, they encourage you to consider the following questions: “How might we, as archivists, rethink our work environments, our practices, and our profession to strengthen the ways in which we work and stay in community? How can we foster a professional culture that is innovative and that continually reevaluates itself? Where can we do better? How do we initiate, and advocate for, positive change in our institutions and communities? How can we come together more effectively as an archival community to support our shared values?”

Proposals for the 2021 Annual Meeting are due on Wednesday, January 13, at 11:59 CT. Learn more here: https://www2.archivists.org/am2021/program/call-for-program-proposals.