This is a warp A warp refers to the thread stretched on a loom. On this website and in the context of constant, we use the word warp to refer to documentation of existing projects and threads. that attempts to take a look at the ongoing process of working on and with accessibility.
In this weft we are presenting questions and themes that we organised around our internal worksession with Kaaitheater and Dr. Guislain musem.
“A cane, sticky notes, another body” focuses on the critical field of accessibility and its many intersections in the physical and digital spaces. The cane represents the tools that physically support, help, expand. The sticky notes stand for the everyday practices, the modest tricks used as a way of being there for each other. Another body refers to the formal and informal networks of care we all need and are a part of.
It is clear to us that working around and towards accessibility is a process that we couldn’t (and shouldn’t) undertake alone. There’s communities of practices across disciplines which we learn a lot from thanks to generous practices of knowledge exchange. Documenting our attempts to make access is, on one side, our way of taking part into these communities of practices and, on another side, a helpful mode for us to keep traces of work that is too often hidden. We are using this year of research to engage Constant in a series of necessary shifts within our institutional, creative but also personal practices that will continue its course way after this year of 2024.
Constant organised an internal worksession in March 2024 called drempel,drempel,drempel. “Internal” because the session gathered mainly Constant members and members of its two main partner organisations for the year 2024, Kaaitheater and Dr. Guislain Museum with additionally a few ‘external’ contributors: Loraine Further,Ren Britton, Alyssa Gersony and Ahnjili Zhuparris. The session was an opportunity for us, as institutional workers, to examine and learn from different crossings, overlaps and gaps in our understanding and effort around and towards access.
To start things off we made a small introductory excercise that asked to draw the institution a person was coming from in the shape of a teapot. This small excercise was put in place to try to move away from the traditional introduction moments where every person would have to say their name, position and other details. to take the attention away from the individual we chose to draw some teapots and present ourselves via the drawings put on the wall.
Constant was represented as a teapot with many teabags and many different holes and spouts (which is the part where tea comes out from)
Kaai theater chose a similar concept for its teapot but added a stove in the form of a city, to symbolize how the city and its people are what make the institution brew.
The week Drempel Drempel Drempel was organised around three main points of focus:
Physical spaces: how to traverse them, signage and other forms of institutional navitation
Language: exploring the possibilities and challenges with multi-languages practices, a look at AI tools for access in and to language
Digital spaces: exploring how the three institutions’ websites operate within certain guidelines and practices on accessibility
The term “accessibility” can feel overwhelming because of the myriad of things that it potentially conveys. Though we think it is important not to shy away from it as it is useful to keep ourselves in check with a work that is never finite, always in the process.
Throughout the rest of the days we delved into some texts to understand accessibility via different lenses. We understood that to define accessibility, you can’t just go off by one definition. it is an intersectional and contextual concept that clings onto many different aspects that shift what access can mean in this encapsulated context. One of the starting texts we read gave us some historical context of the word ‘accessibility’:
[we could record a reading of this]
“According to the Oxford English Dictionary, use of “accessible” as an adjective dates as far back as the fourteenth century, when it denoted being “capable of being entered or approached” and “readily reached.” It was only in 1961 that “accessible” began to be used to denote the ability to be “readily understood.” As a noun, “access” derives from the fourteenth-century Old French “accès” (denoting both the “coming on” or “attack” of an illness or emotion) and from the Latin “accessus” (“a coming to, an approach”). Describing “the power, opportunity, permission, or right to come near or into contact with someone or something,” […].
“Access” can rectify exclusion; however, such efforts remain incomplete without a critical assessment of how those exclusions first came to be and how they continue to function. […] For radical disability activists, the tension in “accessibility” also arises from use of the term to denote inclusion in an unjust system—or, as activist organizer AJ Withers (2015) terms it, “accessing privilege.” In this view, a truly radical approach to accessibility requires considering the tensions between “accessibility” as a solution or checklist versus “accessibility” as an ongoing negotiation. For radical disability activists, the potential of “accessibility” is precisely to mark “access” as an ongoing and shifting process rather than as a mode of solving individualized problems.[…]
while “accessibility” is regularly presented as a way of extending social inclusion to those who have historically been marginalized by ableism or other forms of oppression, this conception of “access” regularly (though rarely explicitly) comes into conflict with “security culture,” “safe space,” or forms of intellectual engagement such as dense theoretical writing or complicated word usage not deemed to be “readily accessible.” Like “accessibility,” these forms of exclusion are also commonly presented as a self-evident good, in which access is deliberately restricted for some in order to create a different kind of access, or community, for others. Importantly, the access barriers created by “security culture,” “safe spaces,” or through particular kinds of intellectual engagement like “inaccessible” writing, are usually taken to be necessary. Indeed, these practices are often necessary in order to create boundaries so as to thwart different kinds of attacks by the state and other enemies. The result is that the assumed good of creating access is pitted against the assumed good of maintaining security, creating community, or deepening our understanding of our ourselves and our world. Here, far from being a self-evident good, “access” functions as a kind of attack upon boundaries that have been constructed for a particular purpose.[…]
The question remains: how might we address the divide in radical practices between celebrating access and acknowledging the need for particular exclusionary spaces within radical milieus to defend ourselves from attack? If, despite its violence, exclusion is a category we want to embrace in certain moments (for example, in calls for sovereignty or in contests over occupation), then it may be through “access” as a boundary practice denoting both “contact” and “attack” that we might find the means of navigating this fraught terrain.
For the day on the physical spaces, we started by telling about our offices and buildings to each other. We shared what we thought need thinking and intervention and how we’re planning to go about it. We looked together at maps, videos and images.
The differences of our institutional realities became quite visible. For instance, Constant, whose office and studio space are not ‘public’ is not held by the same standards than the ones of Kaaitheater and Dr.Guislain museum. They feel a sense of responsability and care towards the public that becomes quite a priority in terms of ensuring the safety of the people in the space. This safety comes with many standards and regulations from various institutions that do not allow for much speculation when thinking along the diversity withing the accessibility questions we propose within constant. Because we do not accomodate a big audience like Kaaitheater and dr. Guislain musem, It also allows us to be more of an integral part of the thinking on access in our own spaces and not having to leave the whole process to external experts without much space for collective thinking and making. Though, the differences in scale, of the buildings but also ressources of Kaaitheater and Dr.Guislain Museum, showed there’s more possibility for ambitious renovations and redoing in relation to access than our DIY approaches. This does not mean that we at Constant will not be as accessible as bigger institutions or that we will not have to look at standards and regulations, in fact, we are able to allow ourselves to take these things as a starting point and go beyond the rigid standards to accomodate for peoples needs on a finer and more nuanced level. This type of work requires time, transparency, collaboration and solidarity with communities.
“Sometimes we find people wandering in the hallways of the museum as they’re searching to access the hospital.”
The question of orientation and signage came up several times in our discussions; it appeared that unclear, confusing or just non existent signs are a common issue in (public) buildings. Since we were thinking of access in relation to physical space, we proposed to work with signs as tools for facilitating access. We divided into three groups, each taking one area for experimenting with the possibilities of signage. One team was in the kitchen, one in the entrance and the third one in the garden. To introduce the exercice, we all followed a ritual by MELT (Loren Britton & Isabel Paehr) from their text “CON(FUSE)ING AND RE(FUSING) BARRIERS”:
“Ritual for bad listening: Take a piece of paper or your smartphone and for 5 minutes, write down every sound that you hear and/or sense (the humming of the heater, the chirping of a bird, the temperature in the room, the brightness of the light). Repeat this ritual in different settings if possible. When and where are you comfortable with listening/sensing? Do you listen/sense deeper with time? Are any of the things you hear/sense an access barrier for you or for someone you know? You can use this ritual as a way of checking in with a new space. This ritual is based on a text by Jonathan Smilges.”
We proposed this ritual for how it makes us be thoughtful and attentive to the space we occupy. Five minutes were enough for our capacity of noticing to sharpen by the minute.
For the signage exercise itself, the three teams unknowingly took three very different directions.
Once Sarah enters the kitchen, she looks around and very pragmatically says “Well, this cannot be a public space”.
The team in the kitchen focused on the many ways that this space could be hazardous; that angle was possibly prompted by the nature of the equipment generally present in kitchens. The signs were used to warn (slightly humorously) about the dangers present in the room.
The making of signs for the kitchen, highlighted how much the studio’s kitchen made with a DIY ethos could constitute a barrier for many: a space relatively large becomes narrow because of the accumulation of appliances and scavenged items, a tap with sometimes scorching running water because of an old water boiler, a missing cooking hood which causes the room to sometimes fill with dense smoke etc.
The team in the entrance proposed a prototype for another type of signage. They attached a yellow fluo string from the entrance door throughout the hallway (around 10m long) to guide people.
As we’re all walking after one another holding the string in one hand, someone proposes “what about a large fluffy string to make it nicer?”
In this way, visitors are guided by holding the string and following it through the space; this is another type of signage that would not rely on visual cues. Though, a visual sign was still created to explain the presence and purpose of the string. The possibility of changing this visual sign into an audio one was mentioned.
Resources:
from the page of autistic hoya, which is run by Lydia X. Z. Brown we have found a useful compilation of ableist language
The author explicitly asked that the link may be shared as long as we reference *both the ableism/language page and the article on “Violence in Language” to contextualize it.
It is important to understand this as language doesn’t exist by itself and is highly tied to different intersections.
A series of exercises coming directly from https://alt-text-as-poetry.net/, a project between artists artists Bojana Coklyat and Shannon Finnegan.
‘Easy’ language
We read each others’ materials and consider whether we understood what was communicated. We had a try at translating a text into simple language. Constant, who is used to be playful and experimental with languages, felt it was important to try to find a balance between its usual modes and the necessity of simple language.
The text of the project on the feminist server rosa was selected by one of the participants.
Here are attempts:
‘original’ text:
rosa (they, them) is a feminist server that travels between different locations, providing a mobile infrastructure for learning, documentation, and experiments for the meetings that happened during the A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers project. rosa is not only its constituting hardware or software, but also the multitude of relations which are created around the making, maintaining and passing on of this infrastructure: the processes that are performed, the affective charge of their actioning, the communities around them.
the text rewritten by some of the participants :
rosa (they, them) is a feminist travelling server. Rosa provided a digital space for learning, documentation and experiments for the meetings of the project called A traversal network of feminist servers. rosa is not only a technological device it is also a community with practices of making, maintaining and sharing.
One question that has informed the preparation of the worksession but that it was not clear when to bring to the table, was the one regarding the many A.I.-fueled projects that propose to solve accessibility questions with technological solutions.
The issue points to an intersection of different ethical and political vectors: companies with terrible exploitative and extractive agendas like Microsoft, OpenAI or Zoom are at the same time able to offer very advanced software “solutions” to questions of access. This includes for example automated closed captions during a videocall, image recognition of documents and situational pictures that could help people with visual impairment as well as people not speaking the bureaucratic language of the country they live in, or being able to automatically generate alt-text from an image.
[…]
We found ourselves oscilating between the advantages and usefulness of these technological solutions proposed by companies that put profit forward and our own desires to propose other modes of working centering ethical, humane practices. Of course it is difficult to deny that thanks to the propietary’s venture capital, they can and are very much able to invest in all things related to access. with the rise of data collection and the increasing demands and regulations to make web content accessible for all, we remain skeptical of how these two combined are used to turbo mine and extract data that feeds back these companie’s initial goal: the capitalisation of the user.
All sorts of governmental bodies and agencies that have direct impact on our lives have a big interestv in data collecction and digitisation. The amount of tracking on the digital space has no limit, and we cannot seem to avoid it. it is not about why one should care about the data collected and their own privacy, it is about understanding the implications that this data has. Things like chatgpt have succesfully infiltrated some daily tasks. From students to staff, it is being used for questions and the memefication of it seems to have no end. As innocent as this seems, openAI has direct ties with dangerous organisations and policy making entities that are determining our threat and security. As we like to not believe in the so called “Ai revolution” we like to point out that dangerous genocidal projects like israel enjoy to latch onto the tech community and Machine learning. They believe that ….
During the drempel session we were faced with the AI questions. We went down a rabbit hole of thinking about alt text and how much of a tideous task it is for big and small institutions.
“This could be a good use of chatgpt” " we were approached by a company to automatise these procedures and become more efficient"
" powerpoint actually has an ai feature that writes the alt text for you"
While discussing and beng uncomfortable by testing out some chatgpt features, openAI changes its policy quietly to allow military services to used their models for surveillance applications in “war zones”. While altman clearly states " that AI is good at some things but, not good at life or death situations", we still choose to engage and allow for companies like openAI to take on tasks that kill…
Altman (founder of open AI and ChatGPT) claims that AI has already been demistified because people are using the technologiy right now, yet no one seems to realize the level in which they become an accomplice to the crimes the affiliated companies are commiting with these models.
After all, do these models that suggest some sort of efficiency really help when it comes to specific tasks? We tested some tools and the results were disapointing. During the session we tested capito’s tool. Capito drew our attention because it is a group that started working on accessible/simple language in 1999. They seem to have embraced the ai craze and created a tool to automate some of the labour they used to do. The results we got were nothing that we had expected of course:
The text rewritten by https://capito.eu
Rosa is a project that travels to different places.
It offers a space for meetings, learning, and trying new things.
The project is part of the A Traversal Network of Feminist Servers.
The space has chocolates, candies, and a soft toy for celebrations.
Rosa is more than just its hardware and software.
It is also about the people who use it and the relationships they create.
These relationships include the processes, emotions, and communities involved.
The users are an important part of Rosa’s infrastructure.
They perform actions that affect the technology and the people around them.
Sharing Rosa involves passing it on to others.
These relationships are important for understanding how Rosa works and how it can be improved.
We ended the session by doing a score that Ren prepared for us. A score is a … that can help us to try to deal with different scenarios when you deal with/are in an institution. We made pairs and chose a specific scenario to tackle together.
//Imane and dona
Scenario:
When starting an event everyone speaks about how they visited their family for a recent holiday. You are estranged from your family and spent the day alone.
* Equal rightsWe advocate to the city and different funding bodies to provide the means so different spaces can be kept open during different holiday moments.
Moreover, inside our institution, when the is a public holiday that inloves some familial gatherings, we look out for events (public or not, things to do together or not) that are happening in the city to share them during meeting or via a specific email. Not target one specific individual but to share it as general information in solidarity with those who might not have good family ties and might end up spending the day alone or isolated.
* REVOLUTIONARYWe find a comunal way of living together ( like a farm ..)
We share all the means of care. We open the boundaries of our families in which care becomes a collectivized practice. There is no such things as nuclear family where you have parents and kids and such but we can all take different roles depending on needs and wishes.
We can throw out the (western) calendar structure, no more mothers day or christmas (controversial haha) and we invent our own calendar of festivities. [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_calendar we are on the 26th of the Windy month ]
* SUPREMACYWe organise collective readings around the book " Abolish family" by Sophie Lewis.
We critisize the privilege that is inherent in the classical family nucleus which provides a lot of benefits and ‘glory’ in current society. It is still very romanticised as the safe dreamy thing that people strive for, it is seen as a positive achievement. People with no kids always have to justify why for example.
* SEPARATISMWe decide to add in our working rules a new point: we cannot speak about families during collective meetings and events.
* DIFFERENTIALWe decide to get in touch with other organisations and insitutions and see if we can built a network of hosting peers. We look into how the city could provide more welcoming events and spaces for people who are alone. We also try to be more aware on everybody family situations and to adjust certain modes of working when needed.
+++++
//ahnjili and peter
Scenario: Your institution works with online etherpads, they are a great open source collective note taking infrastructure. You want to start collaborating with blind people and notice that they are not accessible for folks accessing technology with screen readers.
* equal rightscontact other cultural institutions and other groups/spaces to ask for help because they might have done some work or we organise to find a solution together
* revolutionary create a totally new note taking platform that would be compatible with screen readers
(note shaking! ^^)
* separatisthaving a // etherpad, you use another blind-friendly etherpad, so forking is the proposal
peterpaaaaaaaad
* differentialcrowdfunding for improving both etherpads and screen readers
* supremacism we work towards a collective strive to improve the technologies and those who don’t want to, we shame them; writing a manifesto that imposes some ideas, it’s not proposing
hiring cola marketing team?
[later we can watch some pepsi counter-insurgency]
++++
//Martino & Wendy
scenario: Your institution has decided to ensure that there is always the chance to have captions turned on for all video calls, this supports access for Neurodivergent, D/deaf and anyone learning the spoken language of these calls. You look around at what is currently on offer from various softwares and notice there are no open-source options available.
* equal rights short term: we move everything to zoom, all is captioned all the time -
long term: we work with ligue des droits de l’humain and we mobilize some eu money to develop an open source alternative
[here our scenario moved to live presence to asl translation]
* revolutionary:
we rob a bank to be able to always to pay sign language translator and we all take the train instead of having online set up
we all learn
* supremacism :
sign language we don’t need to hire anyone
* separatist: we all learn sign language and we only speak in sign on Tuesdays
* differential: we prepare a setup that allows parallel transcriptions in the same setup:
* we do include free software that does automatic speech recognition for our live stream,
* but we also pay for live transcribers, that happens next to the automated transcription in a pad, participants can join,
* we also ask beforehand a transcription to the contributors
* >> practical future steps
* we will actually contact denis to install a plug-in for BBB that is called kaldi that does live transcription.. then we can compare it to the one from open-ai ( whisper.cpp) and consider including it for our future streams//elodie+kristien
scenario
in the museum there is a mission at dr.guislain museum, coming from a realization that the museum is about psychiatry and hte team wnted to change that so htat the museum becomes more “in” or “with” psychiatry..
experience of psychiatry shifting. thought different strategies, close to what is tried already
* equal rightssome people from the hospital are patients who have to deal with depression/spychotic period and they also work in the museum. some people are retired and then can volunteer in the museum.
equal rights would mean everyone has a contract in the museum,
https://dementia-platform.jp/en/article/436/
* revolutionary: artistic direction proposing to make a presentation room where all objects about psychiatry are able to be changed, added to, removed by the visitors.
removing the chapel! opening up the gardens again! YEAH
bring your sledgehammers to the revolutionary worksession
* supremacism : not comfortable to work with. other people make the expo
* separatist: following the anti-psychiatry movement, closing down the hospital, create other spaces
* differential: communication done right working together with people with addiction problems, making a podcast together.
chapel can be just opened up partly, not tear down completely
TODO: