Join the HLS Library on Tuesday, September 28 at 12:30 pm ET for the first Faculty Book Talk of the fall 2021 semester! This event features a conversation about Accessible Technology and the Developing World with co-editors HLS Professor Michael Stein, UMD College of Information Studies Professor Jonathan Lazar and panelists Professor Amy Landers of Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law, Social Development Specialist Deepti Samant Raja of World Bank, and Professor Raja Kushalnagar of Gallaudet University’s Department of Science, Technology, and Mathematics. This event is free and will be recorded. Registration is required. If you or an event participant require disability-related accommodations, please contact Accessibility Services at [email protected].
Michael Ashley Stein is the co-founder and Executive Director of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability, and a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School since 2005. Considered one of the world’s leading experts on disability law and policy, Dr. Stein participated in the drafting of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities; works with disabled peoples’ organizations and non-governmental organizations around the world; actively consults with governments on their disability laws and policies; advises an array of UN bodies and national human rights institutions; and has brought landmark disability rights litigation globally.
Jonathan Lazar, PhD, LLM, is a professor in the College of Information Studies (iSchool) at the University of Maryland. Professor Lazar has previously authored or edited 13 books and over 150 refereed articles in journals, conference proceedings, and edited books. He frequently serves as an adviser to U.S. government agencies, regularly provides testimony at the federal and state levels, and multiple U.S. federal regulations cite his research. At the University of Maryland iSchool, he teaches courses on human-computer interaction, user-centered design, accessibility, and legal research methods.
Amy Landers is an accomplished legal scholar and practitioner at Drexel University Thomas R. Kline School of Law, where she is also the Director of the Intellectual Property Law Program. Before joining the Kline School of Law faculty in 2014, she was a distinguished professor of law and director of the Intellectual Property Law Concentration at the University of the Pacific’s McGeorge School of Law. Previously, Professor Landers was a partner at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, in Silicon Valley, CA. where she specialized in IP litigation, antitrust, fraud, trade secret, and trademark cases.
Deepti Samant Raja has worked for over ten years on the socioeconomic inclusion of persons with disabilities and mainstreaming disability in development programming. Her work has spanned research, policy analysis, and capacity-building programs. She currently works as a Consultant on Disability and Development for the World Bank. She also serves as a technical expert for a USAID-funded project addressing violence against women with disabilities in India and their economic empowerment. Previously, she worked as Director of International Programs and Senior Researcher at the Burton Blatt Institute at Syracuse University, Senior Research Analyst at the Global Initiative for Inclusive ICTs.
Raja Kushalnagar is the Director of the Information Technology program in the Department of Science, Technology and Mathematics at Gallaudet University in Washington, DC. His research interests encompass the fields of accessible computing and accessibility/intellectual property law, with the goal of improving information access for deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals. In the accessible computing field, he investigates information access disparities between hearing and deaf. In the accessibility/intellectual property law field, he advocates for updates in laws to incorporate accessible computing advances such as automatic captioning and subtitling.