GOAT Notes #5:
Welcome to the newsletter for Grassroots Open Assistive Tech!
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Events
For May and June, we don’t have in-person events planned (yet). Next up may be either another skill sharing workshop, or a meetup to build items from the archives!
Vincent from ILRCSF and I tried out “tabling” at the Bernal Heights Earth Day Fair on the theory that we might reach a new group who are interested in repair, modification, and making assistive tech. We had a blast chatting as always, and handed out some flyers with information on local disability organizations. I may have pulled in a few new volunteers for GOAT and our joint events at ILRCSF!
I realized belatedly that a street fair at the top of a notoriously steep hill was not the best place to make new connections with assistive tech users. Hanging out on Mission or Market Street and talking with people, or handing out my GOAT and resource flyers to other wheelchair users at cultural events, has been my best avenue for that kind of community building!
Thanks, by the way, to Pinhole Coffee, to its owner JoEllen Depakakibo and Emma who is the store manager, for the parklet space, support, and free Earth Day croissants!!
In April, I also gave a talk at DorkbotSF, a monthly Bay Area event that grew out of robotics, art, electronics, and hacker/maker communities like Survival Research Labs, Make, and so on. Ian was going to do the talk with me but at the last minute could not make it. Next time I hope we can do another joint talk like we did at CripTech years ago!
It was great fun & an honor to speak about GOAT to an audience of hardware & electron inventors! I loved hearing about Greg’s plasma cannon, Isabel and Rudy Rucker riffing on Time Ecosystems, and Gordon’s process of inventing and improving his bubble making irises!
Several people approached me about collaborations we can do, as I invited the crowd to work out GOAT with their expertise and their burning man art car warehouse spaces. We have many people in the community who use wheelchair bases for their battlebots and kinetic or rideable art – like this trilobite-inspired Electrobite! So, watch this newsletter for a future collaboration or skill share event.
Archive Work
Our Archive team visited the Prelinger Library together to bring batch 2 of catalogued and scanned materials for their shelves. I can’t say enough nice things about our archive days, our cozy cameraderie, and the interesting things we read and share as we work! Then, it was very lovely to nerd out in the Prelinger Library collection, browsing armfuls of books, magazines, and ephemera we pulled off the shelves. Veronica, Karen, and I kept showing each other strange discoveries from the stacks!
The librarians have made space for GOAT’s contribution of DIY assistive tech books and other works on low shelves towards the front of the stacks. That makes them extra accessible for anyone who may want to come and browse in person. What a thoughtful and generous gesture!
I have some highlights from books we have scanned to share but they will have to wait for GOAT Notes #6.
Meanwhile:
Our collaboration with A11yhood and University of Washington continues as we are helping to write “user stories” and design some requirements for an API and for the structures of data we are hoping to both provide and be able to use from what they are building - a scraper, a system that runs the scraper, a way to submit URLs (for our future metadata curation team), and then a front end.
We will be able to tag and submit URLs from the scanned PDFs on the Internet Archive, to A11yhood. That way, we can link to (and tag) individual inventions, DIY specs, pages, and so on, inside the source books that we’ve scanned.
If none of that made sense, don’t worry, hahah! Think of it as building the website and database that will let our volunteer teams add metadata — and then will let anyone around the world search for interesting stuff to build.
In June we’ll meet up in person with Jennifer Mankoff, Tony who is writing the code, and Josh Miele, who is joining up with this collaboration! I’m so pleased about that, because Josh and I have been nattering to each other about open source disability stuff for years, and about wanting to bring that passion for free/open hardware and software to disability communities (and disability justice principles to techies, as well) – now we get to work together!
Disability Leadership
If you are disabled and are an organizer, activist, or are just interested in upping your political game, this is a neat event report to check out: The March Disability Organizers Forum where Jessica Lehman, Anita Cameron, Dom Kelly, Amber Smock led a panel discussion. This is a project of the National Disability Leadership Alliance. Here’s the full recording with ASL and captions. And if you prefer reading to listening, here’s the full transcript. In a sense, this has nothing to do with GOAT directly, but I am linking it because I think it gives some really useful context to what it’s like to collaborate with other organizations that are not only focused on disabled people, but are also led by disabled people. It is crucial and so powerful!
Bonus photos
From Dorkbot:
You may have noticed the wheelchair barbie (actually the 90s photographer Becky) in the Earth Day photos. I got this in the 90s since I had a red manual wheelchair at the time and our outfits also more or less matched what with the whole plaid flannel, jeans, and Converse thing she has going on. Back then I made her a little “Camel Book” O’Reilly Perl programming guide. That tiny book is long since lost, but now Wheelchair Grunge Becky has a little cardboard laptop covered in tiny stickers!
What we do
Grassroots Open Assistive Tech’s purpose is to document, curate, preserve, make accessible, and freely share assistive technology designs and information under open licenses, as well as providing coordination and education to affiliated communities.
We support disabled people in making their designs and builds available for public good, and in having free to use designs available to them for their own use.
Please donate!
GOAT is a 501(c)(3) organization and your donations are tax deductible. EIN: 93-3313503.
We are also registered with Benevity for employer-matched donations!
You can donate via PayPal or via check.
PayPal donation email: liz@openassistivetech.org.
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