This is our latest book chapter in the Research Handbook on Disability Policy published by Elgar. This book will be available in June 2023; you can preorder a copy for yourself or your university now.
Savage, S and Curran, T. Disability Rights and Robotics: Being There without Being There (2023) In: Robinson S & Fisher KR (eds). Research Handbook on Disability Policy (2023) UK: Edward Elgar.
This is the report of the Telepresence Teaching in Higher Education as a Reasonable Adjustment project aimed to pilot the use of telepresence robots by an academic lecturer at home as a reasonable adjustment to teach students on-campus in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The aim of this guidance is to assist members of The University of the West of England (UWE) to make the online public events they hold accessible to all. This aim is informed by the Equality Act 2010 and the UWE Equality Policy which promotes a culture of inclusion. An overloaded online event is exhausting, excluding and discriminatory.
This guidance has been produced in consultation with The Centre for Deaf and Hard of Hearing People, The UWE Hub Group members who bring their lived experience of disability, mental health and family caring, UWE learning technologists and the Disability Rights and Robotics co-production team of social science academics and students, some with their own direct experiences of disability.
It covers the planning journey from first ideas, publicity, prior information, designing the event, managing access during the event, and evaluation. A case study is included to encourage all to try out the various access options available - being afraid to try is the greatest barrier to inclusivity
Our event included a telepresence robotic tour of the BRL, which you can access on this page below and the key points of our discussion which took place during our online Knowledge café which included 50+ attendees is summarised in our cartoon.
To the left is a clickable link to open the PDF of our cartoon.
Sam Chuch is the wonderful cartoonist
Sam Church's website (https://www.samchurchillustration.com/)
Authors:
Curran, Tillie; Savage, Sophie; Gibson, Andy; Clarke, Jackie; Morgan, Sheena; Edwards, Karon; Eldon, Kate; McCalla, Patricia; Caleb-Solly, Praminda; Alford, Chris; Meilton, Mary; Tutssel, Kate; Olding, Nathan; Thorman, Elani; Chappell, Francs; Hanley, Corrie; Jones, Leon; Couch, Carris; Lenehan, Jamie; Kuka, Angela; Halliwell, Rebecca; Sferrazzo Bernetti, Guilia; Vasudev, Akash; Kumar Kavvi, Pavan; Comandur, Kaushik.
https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/6416275
We collaborated with cartoonist Sam Church to represent our Robo-Cafe event. Our intentions for doing this were, what was good about this was, what we got out of it was.
Authors:
Church, Sam; Curran, Tillie.
https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/6473649/knowledge-robo-cafe-2020
Here is a list of our commonly used references.