Michelle Macklem

Adaptive is a 4-part podcast series about the interaction between human ability and technology. It was created as a part of Michelle Macklem’s graduate research project in Media Studies at Concordia University. The podcast features researchers, designers and users of technologies that are often associated with disability, to investigate how our perceptions of disability are often shaped by the technologies people use. 

Segments from Adaptive were featured on CBC’s Spark:

Episode 1: Investigating Ability




This episode investigates how we define ability and disability, often based on the technologies we use - like glasses, canes or walkers.

This episode includes:
Graham Pullin, a designer and researcher who wrote the design manifesto Design Meets Disability

Sara Hendren speaking about her work at Olin College in Boston where she teaches a course for engineers on designing for disability and diverse abilities

Aimee Louw - a radio producer, writer and accessibility advocate - speaks about her own experiences of disability and how that identity is really constructed and placed on her by other people

Episode 2:
What is technology?

What is technology delves into the things we consider to be technology - and the things we don't. Owen Chapman, a Professor in Communications at Concordia University discusses how he understands technology, from simple objects to a chair or cardboard, and how this relates to his recent research on disability and mobility studies.

Also in this episode, we visit the Adaptive Design Association in New York that specializes in making custom cardboard adaptations for disabled children.

Episode 3:
Reading by Ear




Can reading only be done by people who can see? This episode explores how reading by ear through Talking Books (for the Blind) can challenge the conventional conceptions of reading.

We speak with Mara Mills, a professor and researcher at NYU, about her research on the history of Talking Books, different from what we think of as commercial audio books. Mara talks about how the history of Talking Books has been largely ignored, even though they revolutionized reading at a very early moment in sound recording history. We also speak with Shafeka Hashash who grew up using Talking Books and recalls her relationship with the medium.

In this episode, we explore the blurry lines between ability, bodies and technology as told by two people. Danielle Peers and Lindsay Eales are artists, scholars and partners in Montreal who study disability through their own embodied experiences.

Danielle is a former wheelchair basketball Paralympian and now researches disability sport and social justice movements in Canada. She uses her wheelchair as a tool to navigate the world, while her partner Lindsay uses her own tools – like psych meds and make-up – to help her deal with mental illness. 

Lindsay is the co-artistic director of CRIPSiE, the Collaboratively Radically Integrated Performers Society in Edmonton, and also a registered occupational therapist and PhD student studying invisible disabilities.

Note: The podcast is no longer available on podcast players but you can email me using my contact form if you’d like mp3s or transcripts of the episodes.

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Credits
Aimee Louw was the series editor
Academic and editoral support: Owen Chapman, Kim Sawchuk, Sandra Gabriele, Charles Acland, Marty Allor, Katie Hill, Mira Burt-Wintonick, Tally Abecassis, Chelsea Barnett

Graphics: Antonia Hernandez, Emma Nichol
Music: Leticia Trandafir (softcoresoft), Lorrie Edmonds, Owen Chapman, Emily Gosse

A very special thanks to the Critical Disability Studies Working Group, and especially Laurence Parent and Danielle Peers.

This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Funding provided by: the Mobile Media Lab, Concordia University, the Graduate Mobility Award and the Daniel Feist Memorial Scholarship.