News and Events
Here's what our team has been involved with recently!
A word cloud generated by attendees of the event.
June 12, 2025 - Written by Tyseer Hima, Accessible Mapping Team
The Accessible Cities and Societies Showcase, held on April 24, 2025, at the Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning in Calgary, brought together participants from diverse disciplines, including researchers, academic staff, community members, and practitioners. Hosted by the University of Calgary Accessibility Network (UCAN) and the Institutes for Transdisciplinary Scholarship, the event fostered knowledge exchange and collaboration to break down accessibility barriers through transdisciplinary collaboration.
Morning sessions
The day opened with a lively breakfast and registration, where attendees shared their valuable insights and professional experiences, sparking meaningful conversations. The "Getting to Know UCAN" session kicked off with roundtable discussions, highlighting the network’s welcoming, decentralized, and community-driven nature. This was followed by the "Asset-Based Community Development" workshop, where participants used whiteboards and sticky notes to identify accessibility gaps and resources. Key themes that emerged included disability justice, community engagement, inclusive design, education and literacy, technology innovation, and intersectionality and neurodiversity. These insights were synthesized into a shared digital document for future action.
Afternoon Sessions
A networking lunch provided opportunities for deeper connections, while the mentorship roundtable offered a space for students to connect with professionals and discuss research ideas. Remote attendees joined via Zoom, contributing to live polls and discussions.
Art Corner
The UCAN Art Corner featured a beautiful collage of business cards, stickers, and handwritten visions for accessible cities, emphasizing the collective commitment.
Impact
The showcase moved beyond talk to action, with participants drafting strategic plans for UCAN’s next year. Its success proved that a transdisciplinary approach is key to bringing people together to develop insightful solutions for building accessible cities where everyone thrives.
Recent News
UCalgary prepares students with skills to thrive across all aspects of life:
...Dr. Victoria Fast is an associate professor in geography and one of the instructors who has adopted Future Skills modules in her courses. A lover of teaching, she has noticed a shift in her classes in recent years with the influx of technology.
“Due to pervasive digital technology and constant scrolling, I don’t think we are able, as a society, to listen and learn anymore,” she says.
“I think the constant input is changing our brains and how we learn, and we need to update our pedagogy to reflect that. Future Skills provides hands-on learning helps make a meaningful learning environment.”
Students participated in an in-class engagement activity for Fast’s GEOG 280 class, Thinking Spatially in a Digital World, focused on the Digital Literacy module. Borrowing some grade weighting from term tests to put more emphasis on in-class learning, Fast says that student learn to engage with the material, complete prep work prior to the class, and then participate in an engaging discussion and task at their roundtables.
“They really loved it,” says Fast. “Students lit up. You can see it on their faces, and they leave feeling energized.”
Fast and Robertson met to discuss what modules would be most appropriate for the specific class, then created an assignment for the students to complete.
“We are working together to develop important skills for students in their domain expertise, and equally important, in professional and lifelong skills,” says Fast.
“I often hear graduating students say they don’t have much experience as they prepare to enter the workforce, which isn’t true. Throughout their degrees, they have learned collaboration, communication, metacognition, and problem solving, among others.”
“We need to teach students not just these fundamental skills, but the language to talk about the skills they have. Future Skills provides that opportunity to students.”
This is a day to amplify the leadership of persons with disabilities and allies working towards an inclusive future:
Dec. 3 is International Day of Persons with Disabilities; meet some of the UCalgary faculty, staff, students and administrators examining disability and accessibility from diverse perspectives.
UCalgary researcher leads exploration of urban accessibility barriers across the globe:
For Dr. Victoria Fast, PhD, the foundation of her research program on creating accessible cities and societies is rooted in the ethos of a university, which is to bring together researchers and experts from various backgrounds to solve a problem. Her approach also helps break down the systemic exclusion of the citizens that her research seeks to help.
"My approach aligns really well with what (the University of Calgary) is doing with the Institutes of Transdisciplinary Scholarship, which has helped me to connect with geomatics engineers, critical disability studies experts and researchers in computational urban planning,” says Fast. “Together, we're building scholarship and solutions around real-world problems.”
Fast is leading the project, Computational Urban Accessibility: Understanding, Mapping, and Scoring Barriers in the Built Environment, which was recently awarded a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Grant, along with 17 other UCalgary researchers.