Posts by Hallee Thompson

Through Mari Katayama of Stamps Speaker Series and the accessibility team at the Shapiro Design Lab, I learned how to bring changes within my own passions to make the university more accessible through design.

Design Lab Resident Hallee Thompson reflects on her own history with accessibility and its importance in many different architectural spaces.

Design Lab Resident Hallee Thompson reflects on her year as an Open Accessibility Resident.

During my time at the Design Lab, I have been interested in how our work in Open Accessibility can help future students on campus. For example, in the lab we are currently developing tactile maps of the library for the visually impaired. A long-term goal of ours is to, not only produce maps for our university, but to create a workflow so that our research can help other universities do the same.

When approaching projects on accessibility, I first wanted to understand my community. Who I am designing for? What goals am I trying to achieve? With these questions in mind, I chose to focus my attention on diversity in technology. More people are using technology than ever before. How can we then use technology as a tool to, not only acknowledge, but improve the lives of the diverse groups of people within our communities? The Michigan Meetings Fall Symposium took a closer look into these questions.