Category: Event

ACCESSTECH had a strong presence at this year’s „Mensch und Computer“ (MuC) in Karlsruhe, Germany. Founded in 2001, the MuC conference is the largest conference series on human-computer interaction in Europe.

Almost the entire ACCESSTECH team was on site to present our work and goals in various workshops, paper presentations and panel discussions to an interested audience of experts.

Our first contribution from Kay and Janis was to co-organise and run the workshop Can’t Touch This? Is This Touch? It’s So Fluffy I’m Gonna Die! — Material and Tangible Research Methods in HCI‘. Together, they created a zine with the catchy name ‘Touchy Feely’, which was duplicated in an overnight action and published directly at the conference the next day. We announced the workshops here on this website in April.

On the second day, Katta gave a prominent keynote speech in the workshop ‘Bedürfnisse sind unterschiedlich und verändern sich, Methoden auch? Umdenken bei Forschungsmethoden’ and used their own practical examples to show how research with the mindset of “being consciously non-helpful” can lead to a fundamental understanding and radical implementation of access and participation.

On the third day, our core values of participation and solidarity were again highlighted in the paper presentation entitled ‘Von Partizipation zu Solidarität: Eine Fallstudie zur Zugänglichkeit von Makerspaces aus Gehörloser und Hörender Perspektive’ by Oliver and Katta.

Oliver then took part in a panel discussion on the topic of ‘The State of (In)Accessibility in Academia’ and used their own experiences to argue that the removal of barriers is a continuous process and can only be successful if it is actively driven forward by all parties involved (with and without disabilities).
With these comprehensive contributions and a dazzling appearance (see photo below), we have evidently succeeded in giving visibility and publicity to our concerns among a (partly somewhat traditional) audience.

All in all, it was a very successful conference which, in addition to the professional aspects, also offered an excellent supporting programme with a festival atmosphere and cultural evening events in an impressive setting. We would like to thank everyone involved in the organisation and implementation and congratulate them on a fabulous MuC24!