Seeing Beyond Disability Dr Paul Harpur’s Fulbright Future Scholarship originally aimed to critically examine how universal design systems are made to ensure that the most silent and vulnerable persons with disabilities are not excluded from this transformational reform agenda. His project involved primary research on disability and technology, with plans to enhance links with overseas disability research centers, including the Harvard Law School Project on Disability and the Burton Blatt Institute at Syracuse University. Yet face-to-face interviews, workshops and conferences became a sudden and abrupt impossibility with the social distancing caused by the COVID-19 pandemic that hit in full force two weeks into his three month project.
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The pandemic meant his method was impossible, but despite the setbacks, Paul still found a way to not only keep the project alive, but broaden its scope to include the impact that public health crises have on society’s most vulnerable. “In my wildest dreams I would not have wanted to live through a pandemic, but what an opportunity to gather data on how society reacts to ability diversity when the institutions and rules in society fall apart.”
Paul rapidly pivoted his plans to analyse how the pandemic was impacting upon people with a disability, and he immediately sought ethics clearance for a new project: Academics with disabilities during COVID-19. He reorganised meetings to source feedback from experts working in medical and data ethics at Harvard University, including the Harvard Law School Project on Disability, the Petrie-Flom Center, and the Berkman Klein Center, resulting in significant new connections and new publishing opportunities.
