Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network – Broadband Internet: Civil Rights and Disability Justice

Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network – Broadband Internet: Civil Rights and Disability Justice

Date: June 22, 2023
Time: 5:00 PM – 6:00 PM EDT

Please join AWN with DeVan Hankerson Madrigal and Valerie Novack for a discussion on broadband, chronic illness/disability, and civil rights.

About this event

In today’s golden age of information, access to the worldwide web is more important than ever. As more of our devices need access to wireless networks, the use of technology such as broadband is needed. Broadband allows multiple devices to access the internet and at faster speeds. For homebound people, it provides access to the outside world.

Speakers

DeVan Hankerson Madrigal is the research manager at the Center for Democracy & Technology. Over the last several years DeVan’s research has focused on disinformation, especially targeted race and gender based online abuse. Her upcoming research aims to measure the impacts of disinformation on women of color in public life. DeVan has also developed research on digital access issues for students with disabilities. In a recent law review article, co-authored with Lydia X.Z. Brown, DeVan wrote about how the COVID-19 pandemic sharpened disparities in learning and digital access for disabled students. She has worked both in third-party coalition management and policy advocacy as Senior Director of Public Policy and Government Relations, with government relations firm the Goodfriend Group. As a technology, internet and telecoms policy researcher by training, DeVan also worked with the Multicultural Media, Telecom, and Internet Council (MMTC) as public interest advocate. DeVan holds an M.A. in International Trade Policy from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, and a B.A. in Psychology and Linguistics from Vassar College.

Valerie Novack (she/her) is a disability policy researcher focusing on inclusive infrastructure and emergency management practices. She focuses on integrating the expertise of lived experience and grassroots efforts of marginalized peoples into policymaking and research at the local, state, and federal levels. Valerie started in a Center for Independent Living before becoming a 2019 Portlight Fellow focusing on legislative solutions to inaccessible emergency response practices in the United States and the founding Board Chair of the Partnership for Inclusive Disaster Strategies. She continues to work towards a more inclusive environment with work in the areas of public health, housing, transportation, and social participation for people with disabilities. She has completed projects with a variety of non-profits, universities, think tanks, and community groups to increase inclusion within communities. Novack has a bachelor’s degree in disability studies and urban planning from the University of Toledo and a master’s degree in disaster preparedness and emergency management from Arkansas State University.

Moderator: Lydia X. Z. Brown, AWN Director of Policy, Advocacy, and External Affairs

[Image: Event banner shows a sunset gradient with a yellow strip. There is DeVan, an African American women with curly brown hair, smiling for the camera. She has brown rimmed glasses, pearl earrings and is wearing an electric blue scarf around her neck. She is standing in an exhibition room where the backs and arms of men in suits are visible behind her. Then there is Valerie, a biracial person with curly black hair who is smiling for the camera. She has black-rimmed glasses and is wearing a blue, flowered romper. She is seated in a coffee shop, backs of patrons visible behind her. Text reads, “Broadband Internet: Civil Rights and Disability Justice on Oct 2, 2022 4pm Eastern / 1pm Pacific with DeVan Hankerson Madrigal and Valerie Novack”. The corner shows the AWN logo – a large “a” with a dragonfly on it, and the words awnnetwork.org.]