Announcement: Virtual Ability's 14th Annual International Disability Rights Affirmation Conference

 

You are invited to attend Virtual Ability's 14th annual International Disability Rights Affirmation Conference on Thursday, November 6, 2025.

Every year in the fall, our community hosts an international professional conference on topics related to disability rights. Not only is this an opportunity for our community members to learn more about important subjects from experts they probably would not have a chance to meet otherwise, it allows the general public to attend a professional conference at no cost. 

The theme of this year’s Conference is “No Health Without Peace.” This theme applies to everyone, not just to persons with disabilities. The broad topic allows our presenters and panelists from Canada, the UK, and the US to explore a variety of meanings of health and of peace. Presenters will also offer various strategies for achieving healthful peace.

The conference will take place in Virtual Ability’s Sojourner Auditorium, on Virtual Ability island. The SLURL for the auditorium is Virtual Ability (54/170/23)

You can view the conference schedule here: https://virtualability.org/idrac-2025/

The livestream will be here: https://www.youtube.com/@VirtualAbilityInc/live

All are welcome. We hope you can attend! 

 

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Virtual%20Ability/54/170/23
 

Announcement: Virtual Ability Presents The International Disability Rights Affirmation Conference (IDRAC) on Friday, Nov 15

 

Virtual Ability, Inc.® presents the 13th Annual International Disability Rights Affirmation Conference (IDRAC) on Friday, Nov 15, 2024.

This annual professional conference will be held online, and is free and open to the public.

The conference will take place in Second Life® at The Sojourner Auditorium on Virtual Ability Island.Virtual Ability (54/170/23) 

The conference will also be Live Streamed on YouTube.

Our theme this year is “Disability & Health: Where will AI take us?” Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an area of current research interest and regulatory concern. It holds both promise and peril for people with disabilities and healthcare in general. The utility and problems of AI differ for people with different types of disabilities. This conference offers a quick look at this broad topic. We expect lively discussions and information sharing among presenters and our very interested and interactive audience.

 

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The events start at 7 AM SL time and end soon before 12 Noon. 

 

To see the schedule, Click Here. 

 

Virtual Ability's Annual International Disability Rights Affirmation Conference

 

You are cordially invited to attend Virtual Ability's annual International Disability Rights Affirmation Conference. This year it will be held on Friday, November 10. It is in Sojourner Auditorium on Virtual Ability island.

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Virtual%20Ability/54/170/23

This year's theme is "Do, Create, Live." We're looking at what people with disabilities can do, create, and live when their rights are respected.

Here is the schedule (subject to change, and in SLT, of course).

7-7:30am - Joseph English will talk about how setting up QuadRebuild to help others changed his new life as a quadriplegic

7:30-8:30am - Erin Willis and Daniel Garza will explain their research on patient influencers who do direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical marketing

8:30-9:30am - Emily Wright, who survived multiple concussions, explains how she rebalanced her mind

9:30-10:30am - John Cronin, who has Down syndrome, describes his Crazy Socks store and how he runs it with his father Mark Cronin

10:30am-11am - a panel discusses what "Do, Create, Live" means in education

11:00-11:30am - BREAK!

11:30am-noon - Keri Gray tells about the National Alliance of Melanin Disabled Advocates (the NAMED Advocates).

noon-12:30pm - a panel discusses what "Do, Create, Live" means in the arts

12:30-1:30pm - Judy Mittag explains how advocates got federal legislation passed to require insurance coverage for lymphedema supplies

1:30-2:30pm - Heather Markham, author, shares how we can each choose a title for our own stories

You can learn more about the speakers here: https://virtualability.org/idrac-2023/

We hope you can attend our conference.

Questions? Ask Gentle Heron.

Virtual Ability, Part Two

 

Earlier, Gemma Cleanslate reported on Virtual Ability. But there was too much about the area and group for just one article. There's that there's a rental area for the disabled who want a home there. There the activities such as weekly tours to other places. There's the game area. There's the Deaf Chat Coffee House. There's the library. And there's more.

Read Gemma's article in Places.

 

 

Virtual Ability

 

In her article for today, Gemma Cleanslate looks at Virtual Ability. Recently they had a conference about the challenges of disabled people living in rual areas. But conferences such as these are only part of what this area in Second Life offers. There are exhibitions, relaxation areas, library areas, and more in this place devoted to improving the lives of those with disabilities.

Read Gemma's story in Places. 

Gofundme for Becky Nosferatu

 

Becky Nosterfau, one of Montecito Bay's content creators, has fallen into hard times. She explained the situation in a Gofundme for the situation.

 

So long story short, my disability was up for review and due to the Post Office not delivering my paperwork, I lost my disability. I've filed for a reclaim, but I have no fucking idea if they're going to give it back to me. I had to file 4 different forms and mail them in.

My case worker lost it last week, so I had to fax it in this time. This situation took 3 months to even get this far, because every time I called Social Security, they kept jerking me around, giving me wrong advice, and/or didn't know what to do properly to help me. My disability officially ended in December. (No one in my family got Christmas presents from me this year because of it, including my 15-year-old child.)

 

Becky had some good news. Not long after the Gofundme went up, some generous people donated the initial $500. But she was hoping to get a little more, "Hopefully I can get a bit more. I lowballed as much as possible, cause I didn't want to seem greedy."

For those wishing to donate, once again, the gofundme is here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/need-help-disability-cut-me-off?

Announcement: Virtual Ability IDRAC Conference This Friday

 Save the Date- Oct 28 IDRAC 

Virtual Ability's annual International Disability Rights Affirmation Conference is a free public professional conference. This year's conference is on Friday, October 28, in the Sojourner Auditorium on Virtual Ability island. The theme of the conference is "Access to Justice."

The impetus behind Virtual Ability's conferences is to provide professional-level information to the general public in a highly accessible format. Most of us would never get to hear from and interact with these researchers and other experts outside of Second Life!

You can see the conference schedule and more about the speakers here: https://virtualability.org/idrac-2022/

Presenters at this year's conference range from a lawyer talking about how "typical" employment hours are discriminatory,  to a student investigating the fairness of AI hiring software; from a retired professor who became a disability ally, to a physical therapist who has written children's books featuring a dog with an amputated leg who deals with discrimination and bullying.

Additionally, several of the poster sets on Healthinfo Island address topics related to Access to Justice. These you can visit any time during the month of October. Be sure to click each poster for additional information and live links. You can get a notecard containing all the text (posters + click text) plus image descriptions by clicking the entrance poster.

We hope you can attend the IDRAC conference on October 28. If you (your avatar) can't attend live in Second Life, you can watch the conference live stream on Virtual Ability's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/VirtualAbilityInc

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Virtual%20Ability/54/170/23

 

Reminder: IDRAC Conference Tomorrow

 

Just a reminder that the International Disability Rights Affirmation Conference is tomorrow, Saturday October 10, at the Sojourner Auditorium at Virtual Ability.

Click Here for the schedule.

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Virtual%20Ability/54/170/23

Press Release: International Disability Rights Affirmation Conference, Oct 10

International Disability Rights Affirmation Conference
Saturday October 10
Sojourner Auditorium on Virtual Ability island

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Virtual%20Ability/54/170/23

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disability Act, our theme this year is “Where have we been? Where are we headed? How should we get there?”

7:30am SLT- "Ludic Design for Accessibility" - Manohar Swaminathan, Microsoft Research India

8:30am SLT- "Exploring Ethical and Social Implications of Embodied AI" - Amelia Fiske, Technical University of Munich

9:15am SLT- "Memories of July 26, 1990" - Margaret Nosek, Baylor College of Medicine

10am SLT- "Who are the Heroes? A History of the Disability Rights Movement" - Barry Whaley, Southeast ADA Center

11:30am SLT- David Larson, Hamline School of Law, Dispute Resolution Institute

1pm SLT- "Employment and the ADA" - Krista Watson, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

2:30pm SLT- "Women with Disabilities: Experiences of Microaggressions" - Rhoda Olkin, Alliant International University

You can read more about the speakers and their session topics at the conference website: https://virtualability.org/idrac-2020/

Press Release: 2019 IDRAC Schedule

This year’s annual IDRAC conference will be held on Friday and Saturday, November 1 and 2. It has the theme “We help each other, we help ourselves.”
Read about the conference here: https://virtualability.org/idrac-2019/

The conference is held in the Sojourner Auditorium on Virtual Ability island.
The SLURL is http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Virtual%20Ability/54/170/23

Here is the schedule.

NOTE All times are given as SLT or Second Life Time, which is the same as Pacific time in California. You should use a converter such as https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter-classic.html to confirm your local time.

FRIDAY
7 am SLT Mari Kimura (PCORI)
“The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI): Mission and Successes”
8:30 am SLT Arleen Ionescu (Shanghai Jiao Tong University) and Anne-Marie Callus (University of Malta)
"Reading the Personal and the Social in Disability Studies and Trauma Studies"
10 am SLT Catalin Brylla (University of West London)
“Disability and Media Representation”
11:30 am SLT Frederic Fovet (Royal Roads University)
“UDL in Higher Ed: Shifting access from the remedial to the proactive”
1 pm SLT Nohemi Lugo, Maria Elena Melon, Maria Concepcion Castillo (Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico)
“The representation of autism in the narratives of fanfiction.net: Affinity spaces as an opportunity for the negotiation of meaning”

SATURDAY
6:30 am SLT panel “Hearing Our Voices” with Alyssa Hillary (blogger and advocate), Rob Castellanos (Syndio Health) and Kirk Munsch (Rare Patient Voice)
8 am SLT showing and discussion of the video “The Bench”
9 am SLT Fleur Heleen Boot (Radboud University Medical Centre, the Netherlands)
"Which factors influence access to assistive products for people with intellectual disabilities?"
10:30 am SLT Sunil Deepak (AIFO, Italy)
"Challenges and Opportunities in Community-based Rehabilitation and Emancipatory Disability Research"
Noon SLT Katherine Breward (University of Winnipeg)
"Disability Accommodation and Intersectional Identities: Evidence for Differential Requesting and Accommodation Rates"
1:30 pm SLT Lydia X. Z. Brown (advocate)
"The Autistic People of Color Fund: Building Networks of Mutual Aid by/for Negatively Racialized Autistic People"

How Second Life Makes Life Better For A Disabled Person

Life, virtual and otherwise, is hard enough when you're fully abled. But when you're disabled, it gets tougher. Deaflegacy, as her name suggests, has been deaf since birth, able to hear only with hearing aids. So how does she feel virtual life is for a disabled resident? When one knows how, it can make life in general better.

Read Deaflegacy's story in People.

Press Release: Virtual Ability's Annual International Disability Rights Affirmation Conference, October 5 and 6

This year Virtual Ability will hold its annual International Disability Rights Affirmation Conference on Friday and Saturday, Oct. 5 and 6. The theme of this year's conference is "Taking Care of Us."

We are very excited about the presenters we will have this year.

One is from the United Nations (he will speak at 8:30am SLT on Friday). Another is an Emmy award winning filmmaker (he presents Friday at 11:30am SLT). And on Saturday at 11am SLT, we will interview a Section Editor for the New York Times.

Our presenters are from Hong Kong, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, the UK, Ghana and Mauritius as well as the US, so it's a truly international group of presenters. You can see the full schedule here: http://virtualability.org/idrac-2018/

Questions? You can email me (gentle@virtualability.org) or IM Gentle Heron.

Thank you kindly.

SL Video: "Our Digital Selves: My Avatar Is Me"

(Click here if the video fails to play)

From Draxtor Despress on May 17, "'Our Digital Selves: My Avatar is me!' tells the story of 13 global citizens and their avatars as they transcend their various disabilities through artistic expression and making a home for themselves in the VR Metaverse. The film follows researchers Tom Boellstorff and Donna Davis as they facilitate deep connections between real human beings in virtuality by giving away digital land to build anything the participants of this project can dream up. As Boellstorff and Davis finish up their 3-year study made possible by a grant from the National Science Foundation [entitled 'Virtual Worlds, Disability and New Cultures of the Embodied Self'], the film provides a window into a world of seemingly unlimited possibilities for borderless human interaction, irrespective of physical location and or ability. 'Our Digital Selves' weaves together physical and virtual cinematography as the protagonists’ backstories are re-enacted via Machinima. The film will is available for free on YouTube and as a download for qualifying institutions at http://ourdigitalselves.com/documentary "

 Contact Drax at draxtor.com for more information

* * * *

Virtual Ability would publish three interviews of people in the video. Alice Krueger would interview Tom Boellstorff and  Donna Davis. Gentle Heron would talk to iSkye Silverweb and Slatan Dryke in her interview article. 

SL Video: "Our Digital Selves Official Teaser #3" [Drax Files Special coming 2018]

(Click here if the video fails to play)

From Draxtor Despress on Feb 1, "*** first teaser is here = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8GYs... & second one here = https://youtu.be/SODrRDJ-bQM ***"

SL Video: "Our Digital Selves Official Teaser #2" [Drax Files Special coming 2018]

(Click here to see the video)

From Draxtor Despress on Dec 01 (the first video is here).

Press Release: Virtual Ability's International Disability Rights Affirmation Conference

The 6th annual International Disability Rights Affirmation Conference is a professional conference, free and open to the public, where we continue to celebrate progress in the disability rights movement and examine areas where we must continue to find ways to advance the rights of people with disabilities.

Below is the schedule for this year's conference, themed "Who Is Responsible?"

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
FRIDAY December 1
8:00am
Mr. Louis Olander, Doctoral Candidate, Urban Education, CUNY Graduate Center
9:30am
Mr. John McArdle, Black Triangle, Scotland, UK
11:00am
Dr. David Wasserman, Department of Bioethics, National Institutes of Health
12:30pm
Dr. Margaret Nosek, Baylor College of Medicine
2:00pm
Dr. Amie O'Shea, Deakin University, Australia
3:00pm
Social/Networking After Party
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SATURDAY December 2
8:00am
Dr. Christopher McMaster, New Zealand high school educator
9:30am
Ms Katie Tastrom, MSW, Esq., blogger and author
11:00am
Dr. Sonya Freeman-Loftis, Morehouse College
12:30pm
Dr. Carol Moeller, Moravian College
2:00pm
D. Anjali Forber-Pratt, Vanderbilt University
3:00pm
Social/Networking After Party

For additional information, please see:

http://www.virtualability.org/conferences/idrac/idrac-2017/

http://blog.virtualability.org

Fran Seranade of Creations for Parkinsons

Deaflegacy recently went to Creations for Parkinsons. There she met Barbie Alchemi, who wanted to talk about the person who was the real driving force behind the place in Second Life: her mother Fran Serenade. Fran, who recently turned 90, has been an example of how Second Life can help those with disabilities as despite her Parkinson's, she describes herself as getting better in recent years, attributing the improvement in her well being to Second Life and the friendships she has made there. Her daughter Barbie talked about the Parkinson's Support Group, of which Fran has made a number of friends, and the two birthday parties she had, including one in real life which included some she knew from Second Life.

Read Deaflegacy's story in People.

Press Release: International Disability Rights Affirmation Conference This Friday, Saturday

International Disability Rights Affirmation Conference (IDRAC 2016)
"We’re Part of the Community.”
The Sojourner Auditorium, Virtual Ability Island??
http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Virtual%20Ability/56/174/23

Friday, November 18
8am Caroline Pavis of Johnson and Johnson will talk about their HealthEVoices disability bloggers conference.
9:30am Theresa Lorenzo of the University of Cape Town, South Africa, will talk about her research on ways to make disability-inclusive services available in rural areas of South Africa, Botswana and Malawi.
11am A panel of members of Chronic Pain Anonymous will talk about peer support in various social media venues.
12:30pm Members of the Baylor College of Medicine (TX) Center for Research on Women with Disabilities will talk about their GoWoman weight management project for women with mobility disabilities.
2pm Maggie Sheets with the Disability Policy Consortium of Massachusetts will explain the importance of including people with disability in policy making.


Saturday, November 19
8am l’Arche, an intentional mixed residential community for people with and without intellectual disabilities (presenter still being confirmed).
9:30am Margaret Nosek, professor in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Baylor College of Medicine, will talk about her research projects in Second Life for women with physical disabilities.
11am John Lester, expert in online communities and former Education Liaison with Linden Lab, will talk about early patient support communities in virtual worlds created by Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard.
12:30pm A presentation by Virtual Ability community member KriJon about people with disabilities and 9/11.

For more information about presenters and presentations, please see the Virtual Ability blog:
http://blog.virtualability.org

Interview With Jadyn Firehawk of "Pixel to Pixel"

Jadyn Firehawk is the creator and head of the "Pixel to Pixel" Foundation, a group that provides Lindens to residents certified to be on disability in order to them to have some income. Recently, Deaflegacy interviewed her. Jadyn talked about how she found out about Second Life, and how her organization came to be.

Read more in People.

What Second Life Means From A Disabled Person's Point of View

It was about a year ago Deaflegacy first came to Second Life. As someone whom is deaf in real life, Deaflegacy found communicating with others quite different in the virtual world. In her latest article, she describes from her point of view what Second Life has meant.

Read Deaflegacy's article in People.