Posts by Kayla Williams

Design Lab Student Developer Kayla Williams reflects on learning about the Django web framework.

Recently, I attended an event known as Inclusion of Individuals with Disabilities: Using Your Skills and Gifts to Create Access in Your Community. It was part of the Center for the Education of Women + Inspire Workshop series. It was such a unique workshop, because workshops gloss over the effects disabilities have on people have them. I personally loved that the speaker, Jacqueline Kaufman, went into detail about disabilities and incorporating deafness with cochlear's. Sometimes, these details are excluded from the conversation. To formally introduce her, she is an Associate Professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the University of Michigan Medical school.

I have always been curious and interested in Project Management. The most I knew about it was from observing my Product Owner during my summer internship. Product Owner is somewhat similar to a Project Manager for Agile Methodology in a work environment. I witnessed my PO managing meetings and being a form of communication. It seems as if a PO presents information and reports back to the higher up. But I haven’t gotten a strong understanding of their role especially behind the scenes. So, out of curiosity, I decided to watch Project Management Foundations on Lynda.

Aimi Hamraie visited University of Michigan, as a part of Disability Awareness Month, and shared her well-known book as Building Access: Universal Design and the Politics of Disability. Hamraie shared key points from her book such as strategies for designing and making things more accessible for those with disabilities. She shared history from the time people have been advocating for rights and accessibility to now. Lastly, she discussed her remarkable work at Vanderbilt University with an ongoing project revolving around participatory mapping, data collection, and Crip technoscience project that are based on principles of disability justice, intersectionality, and spatial practice to explore mapping as a tool for social justice.