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Critical Design Lab

Plain Language Summary

Remote Access Archive Home

About the Archive

Remote access is when you learn, work, and meet friends who are in different places than you. You might go to school on your computer, mail a letter to a friend, or do your work on the telephone. During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, many non-disabled people started using remote access. Using remote access was not new to disabled people, however. Many disabled people had been practicing remote access for years. But when they asked non-disabled people for remote access, they were told "no." They were told remote access was too hard to do and would cost too much money.

The Critical Design Lab is a group of disabled people who work together through remote access. We wanted to document how we and other people use remote access. We wanted to document how people have used remote access, before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. We wanted to document remote access so that the world could learn about and remember that remote access is important for disabled people.

This was the start of the Remote Access Archive.

Methodology

Methodology is:

  • How we built the archive
  • Why we did what we did

The Remote Access Archive is a community archive. That means it was made by a group of disabled people who use and care about remote access. Most of the people who have worked on the Remote Access Archive over the years have never met in person. We don't need to.

Our goal is to share some examples of remote access. We can't share examples of all kinds of remote access. There are too many types of remote access to include them all here. But we hope that the examples here will make you curious and excited about remote access.

The Remote Access Archive is very broad. We wanted it to include a lot of different examples of remote access. We decided that we wanted to understand how disabled people have used technology for remote access. We wanted to understand remote access before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. This meant that we did not limit ourselves to a particular place or time period. This is one way that this archive is different from other archives.

We also use a broad definition of "technology." Technologies are tools that people use to help them do things. Technologies can be digital or analog. They can also be unconventional. A radio can be a technology. A set of directions written in a document can be a technology. A piece of media can be a technology. A group of people can be a technology. The things that people do when they get together can also be technologies.

We included almost everything people sent us. The Remote Access Archive contains people's stories, memories, and opinions. We believe that people told us their truths. But if you are doing research, you might want to double check other documents to make sure that what you are writing is accurate.

How We Collected Data

We used "crowdsourcing" for this project. This means we wanted a lot of different people to share items for the archive. We:

  • Talked to people we know
  • Talked to people we didn't know 
  • Shared a call on the CDL website, Twitter and Instagram. 

We asked people for:

  • Interviews 
  • Self-submitted narratives, where people wrote about the experiences with remote access 
  • Documents

Often, when we talked to people we asked if they knew other people we should talk to. This is called "snowballing."

As people talked to us and sent us their stories and documents we tried to think about experiences or  technologies that weren't in the archive yet. Then we tried to find people who could share about those experiences or technologies.

We also read books and other documents, looking for examples of remote access. We focused on examples of remote access from outside of North America and Europe.

How We Sorted the Data

When someone sent us an item, we would read, watch, or listen to it. Then we would write down keywords, words that stood for an important idea or experience. We hope keywords will help other researchers find what they are looking for.

Data Not Included in the Archive

There are some things that we collected that aren't in the public archive. This includes a few interviews and data that is still available online. For example, when we thought Twitter might disappear we downloaded disability hashtags. We have thousands of pages of these hashtags. But for now, these are still available online.

Access

Here's the access you can expect from the Remote Access Archive: 

  • Every oral history is written out. 
  • Every oral history is available as a word document and a PDF.
  • You can listen to some of the oral histories on the Contra* podcast. 
  • All documents are available as Word documents.
  • If we made a word version of a PDF file it will have an access statement telling you any differences between the PDF and Word versions. 
  • We made descriptive transcripts of videos. Descriptive transcripts write out the words, sounds and short descriptions of video images.
  • Sometimes we link to other websites. We haven't made Word documents of PDFs on other websites.

Contact

If you have questions please contact project manager, Kelsie Acton at KelsieActon@gmail.com.

If you need audio or video of an oral history you can email RemoteAccessArchive@gmail.com.

Please give us at least two weeks to reply.