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Reimagining access: Improving access to digital archives through participatory design
Journal of Digital Media Management,
11
(4),
324-333
(2023)
Abstract
From 2020 to 2023, ArtCenter College of Design developed research, prototypes and protocols on digital accessibility related to archives and special collections. This paper discusses how design faculty, students, archivists and disability advocates worked together through a human-centred, participatory design methodology to facilitate a symposium and two studio courses. Student-conducted interviews with communities of people with self-identified disabilities were crucial to project development that led to multiple outcomes. Additionally, research insights generated creative prompts for archivists, educators and designers to use as a tool to help make digital archives more accessible. Taken together, this paper presents a multi-year case study in institutional access that highlights potential opportunities and unforeseen barriers that, if unconsidered, pose issues of ethical and technical import.
Keywords: archives; disability; interaction; human-centred design; participatory design
The full article is available to subscribers to the journal.
Author's Biography
Elise Co is a professor in the Interaction Design and Graduate Media Design Practices departments at ArtCenter College of Design. Co is a technologist and co-principal of Aeolab, a research prototyping studio in Los Angeles. She holds an MS degree in media arts and sciences and a BS degree in architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Robert Dirig is the Director of Archives and Special Collections at ArtCenter College of Design. He holds an MLIS from the University of California, Los Angeles UCLA and was the Co-Principal Investigator for the IMLS grant project Reimagining Access: Inclusive Technology Design for Archives and Special Collections.
Joshua Halstead Josh Halstead is an assistant professor in the Designmatters and Humanities and Sciences department at ArtCenter College of Design. His scholarly work centres the bodymind as a subject of design knowledge.
Maggie Hendrie is Professor and Chair of Media Design Practices and Interaction Design and Graduate Media Design Practices at ArtCenter College of Design. She is the co-director of the NASA/JPL/Caltech/ ArtCenter Data to Discovery visualisation programme, and was the Co-Principal Investigator for the IMLS grant project Reimagining Access: Inclusive Technology Design for Archives and Special Collections.
Todd Masilko is an associate professor and Faculty Director in the Interaction Design Department at ArtCenter. He is a graduate of the Product Design programme at ArtCenter and teaches a wide range of sponsored studio classes at ArtCenter.
