FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 11, 2024 
Termeh Rassi, Press@leonardo.info

Leonardo CripTech Incubator receives Ability Central’s 2025 Communication Access Grant for its groundbreaking career, leadership, and access work in art and technology

Oakland, California - 11 February 2025 - The International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology (Leonardo/ISAST) is excited to announce that its CripTech Incubator is the recipient of the Ability Central Communication Access Grant.   

"We are honored to receive the Ability Central Communication Access Grant as recognition of Leonardo’s ongoing commitment to champion access as creative practice and break down barriers across creative sectors. This generous support enables Leonardo to experiment with “cripping” technology led by disabled artists, fostering leadership opportunities and driving innovation that benefits all." said Diana Ayton-Shenker, CEO, Leonardo/ISAST.

Launched in 2021, Leonardo's CripTech Incubator promotes diversity across the arts and technology by providing an innovation platform for artists with disabilities to remake creative technologies through an accessibility lens. Leveraging labs, fellowships, residencies, workshops, and exhibitions, CripTech Incubator reimagines how a body-mind can move, look, and communicate by employing a broad understanding of technologies, including prosthetic tools, neural networks, software, and the built environment.

“CripTech Incubator centers the experience, expertise, creativity, and leadership of disabled artists. Taking non-compliant approaches to technology, these creators expand the field of possibilities in art, technology and community. We are eager to scaffold this crucial work at a time of profound technological shift.” says Leonardo Director of Programs, Vanessa Chang. 

With the support of the Ability Central Grant, CripTech Incubator will continue to foster disability innovation in emerging technologies, kicking off with the 2025 launch of the CripTech AI Lab and the Touch Aesthetics Fellowship with Arizona State University’s Narrative and Emerging Media Program. These Labs will engage a cohort of emerging disabled creatives to cultivate their practice using artificial intelligence and haptics as creative tools. What new paradigms might emerge when disabled creatives contribute to the development and applications of these emerging technologies? Disabled artists working with AI and haptics can help chart a path for algorithmic and sensate futures where disabled people’s ways of knowing and being are valued.   

"Ability Central is proud to support Leonardo/ISAST's CripTech Incubator in amplifying the voices of disabled artists and innovators," says Alyah Thomas, Ability Central's Accessibility and Partnerships Manager. "We see this project, and the particular focus on artificial intelligence and haptics, as an investment in a future where accessibility is not an afterthought, but a driving force for creative technology. Disability-led innovation has the power to reshape the landscape of art and technology, and we look forward to the impact of this groundbreaking work." - Alyah Thomas, Accessibility and Partnerships Manager, Ability Central

The Touch Aesthetics Fellowship with ASU Narrative & Emerging Media will run from February 2025 through April 2025, culminating in an in-person showcase in Los Angeles, California. 

The CripTech AI Lab will run from June 2025 through November 2025, culminating in a virtual exhibition and showcase.

For more information about the CripTech Incubator and Leonardo’s access work, please visit leonardo.info/criptech or contact press@leonardo.info

For more information about Ability Central please visit https://philanthropy.abilitycentral.org/ 

About Leonardo 

Fearlessly pioneering since 1968, Leonardo serves as THE community forging a transdisciplinary network to convene, research, collaborate, and disseminate best practices at the nexus of arts, science and technology worldwide. Leonardo serves a network of transdisciplinary scholars, artists, scientists, technologists and thinkers, who experiment with cutting-edge, new approaches, practices, systems and solutions to tackle the most complex challenges facing humanity today.

As a not-for-profit 501(c)3 enterprising think tank, Leonardo offers a global platform for creative exploration and collaboration reaching tens of thousands of people across 135 countries. Our flagship publication, Leonardo, the world’s leading scholarly journal on transdisciplinary art, anchors a robust publishing partnership with MIT Press; our partnership with ASU infuses educational innovation with digital art and media for lifelong learning; our creative programs span thought-provoking events, exhibits, residencies and fellowships, scholarship and social enterprise ventures.