Remote Access Archive
Image Description: Screenshot of a Zoom shared screen, which shows a work of art by Yo-Yo Lin. The art is a white and grey blob against a black background. The top of the screen names the Zoom Meeting. The bottom shows a series of grey buttons, along with an orange chat button that is lit up. A speech bubble above it "From Dominika to everyone" says "yes same issue with audio."
The Remote Access Archive documents the ways that disabled people and their communities have used technology for remote forms of participation, both before and during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. This is a crowdsourced, community-based, and digital archive.
The term "remote access" describes learning, working, socializing, and organizing with other people who are in different places. In our digital era, remote access is very common. But this was not always the case.
This is also a crowdsourced archive. Crowdsourcing is when you ask people to send in sources. We included most of the materials that people sent in.
This is a community archive. This means that the archive is for the disability community and our allies. Our community archive reflects our relationships and networks. We have made choices that make this archive different from the type of collection you would find in a library. This is because we want the archive to be usable by the people who are in the archive. We also want to think about who knowledge belongs to and what it is for.
This is an evolving archive. We know that the materials that we have here are just the tip of the iceberg. The vast digital world makes it impossible to collect evidence of the majority of remote access. We offer these materials to help you get curious about remote access. There will be more work to do in the future.
We hope that this archive will help you get more curious about remote access.
Contact Information
Get in touch with the Remote Access Archive team at RemoteAccessArchive@gmail.com. Please allow two weeks for a reply.
Funding
The Remote Access Archive was created with generous support from the Social Science Research Council, the National Science Foundation, and Vanderbilt University.
Links:
Please note, we are beta testing the archive website and its features. If you are interested in being a beta tester, or if you are wanting to access the archival data, please email RemoteAccessArchive@gmail.com for a password. In your email, please describe how you plan to use the data. We may also ask you a couple of questions about your experience of the archive to help us finalize the format.