Access to astronomy, including its concepts, discoveries,                                                          ability to amaze, and potential for understanding                                                                               the natural world, is a human right 

On October 8, 2016 the first version of the Workshop on Astronomy Beyond the Common Senses for Accessibility and Inclusion was held in Cartagena de Indias (Colombia). It represented an international effort aligned to the objectives of the IAU Division C  Commission C1  WG 3, with a program highlighting initiatives from many places around the world.

Click here to have a look at the program of the first Workshop, and enjoy the Photo Gallery1 and Gallery2.

Now, we have the pleasure to announce the II Workshop on Astronomy Beyond the Common Senses for Accessibility and Inclusion  (Virtual). 
 
This is an interdisciplinary meeting with participation from astronomers, educators and disability specialists. The second version of the workshop provides a new opportunity to develop strategies, work toward specific objectives,  share experiences, discuss recent applications, and participate in initiatives that were developed for audiences with disabilities.

BANNER

The image we are using in the banner of this website belongs to the project 

«A Touch of the Universe» from University of Valencia,  a non-profit project for a

 tactile astronomy kit addressed to children with vision impairments. 

TOPICS 

• Inclusion
• Diversity
• Equity
• Art and Astronomy

KEY SPEAKERS

LANGUAGE

PLATFORM

Registered participants will be able to join the event through the Zoom platform. There will be also live streaming on Youtube open for general access.

PROCEEDINGS

Contributions (invited/oral/poster) will be part of the Conference Proceedings that will be published in the Revista Mexicana de Astronomía y Astrofísica – Conference Series.

CODE OF CONDUCT

Our conference is dedicated to providing a harassment-free conference experience for everyone, regardless of gender, identity and expression, age, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, religion or lack thereof), or technology choices. We do not tolerate harassment of conference participants in any form. Sexual language and imagery is not appropriate for any conference venue, including talks, workshops, parties, Twitter and other online media.  All attendees, speakers, sponsors and volunteers at our conference are required to agree with the IAU Code of Conduct  in line with the IAU’s mission to promote and safeguard astronomy worldwide.

SPRINGBOARD TO ACTION

Participant are encourage to read the IAU recommendations for improving and promoting equity, inclusion and diversity

IMPORTANT DATES 

First announcement: August 13, 2021

Second announcement: September 30, 2021

Abstract submission deadline (contributed talk): September 30, 2021

Abstract submission deadline (poster): October 15, 2021

Definitive Workshop Agenda: November 8, 2021

Workshop: November 17-18, 2021

Proceedings deadline: January 15, 2020

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SOC

• Santiago Vargas Domínguez (Chair) – Universidad Nacional de Colombia  (Colombia)
• Beatriz García – Instituto de Tecnologías y Detección en Astropartículas,    CNEA, CONICET, UNSAM (Argentina)    
• Angela Pérez – Planetario de Medellín (Colombia)
• Nicolás Vásquez – Escuela Politécnica Nacional (Ecuador)
• Sonia Duffau – Associated Universities Inc., National Radio Astronomy Observatory (Chile)
• Gary Hemming – European Gravitational Observatory (EGO) | REINFORCE  

LOC

• Andrés Molina – Universidad Nacional de Colombia 
• Erika Hernández – Universidad Nacional de Colombia
• Silvina Pérez Álvarez – Instituto de Tecnologías y Detección en Astropartículas,                CNEA, CONICET, UNSAM (Argentina)     

 
* Bear in mind that times are in GMT. Convert to your local time here

Day 1 (November 17)   12:30-17:00 GMT

• 12:30: Welcome
• 12:45: Invited talk by Gary Foran – Swinburne University of Technology
• 13:30: International collaboration for Science Education in underprivileged areas (Mirwat Shamshad)
• 13:45: A permanent and inclusive exhibition at INAF Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory  (Alessandra Zanazzi)
• 14:00: Painting graphs with sounds: CosMonic sonification project  (Rubén García-Benito)
• 14:15: GWitchHunters – A Citizen Science project for the Improvement of Gravitational Wave Detectors  (Francesco Di Renzo)
• 14:30: Astronomía sin fronteras. Planetario accesible  (Graciela Cacace)
• 14:45: Invited talk by Dayna Thompson  – Charles W. Brown Planetarium – Ball State University 
• 15:30: Astronomía on-line para personas con discapacidad visual  (Erika Fabiola Labbé Waghorn)
• 15:45: The Role of Virtual Conferencing in Creating a Greener and More Inclusive Profession  (Travis Rector)
• 16:00: SoniCosmos  (Sandro Bardelli) 
• 16:15: Chandras’s accesible universe: From Sight to Sound & Touch  (Kimberly Arcand)
• 16:30: Dissemination of the “Touch the Universe” Tactile Exhibition  (Kumiko Usuda-Sato)
• 16:45: End of Day 1

Posters Exhibition during all the session

Day 2 (November 18)   16:30-21:00 GMT

• 16:30: Welcome
• 16:45: Invited talk by Stavros Katsanevas (European Gravitational Observatory) 
• 17:30: NASA’s Neurodiversity Network: Creating Inclusive Informal Learning Opportunities across the Spectrum  (Lynn Cominsky) 
• 17:45: Kit to facilitate the inclusive teaching of astronomy  (Amelia María Bayo Arán) 
• 18:00: Astro[sound]bites: An audio resource for informal education  (William Saunders)
  
• 18:15: Astronomy for Students with Visual Impairments: Development of the Career Exploration Lab  (Thomas Madura)
  
• 18:30: Astroparamo-Science club of planetary habitability and climate change  (María José Villarreal Gómez)
  
• 18:45: #AstronomiaInclusiva – Invited talk by María del Carmen Argudo Fernández –  Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso  
• 19:30: How to use Salsaj Software to Perform Photometry, Astrometry, Image Processing in 3D  (John Carlos Mora Martínez)
• 19:45: Caribbean Astronomy for Inclusion (CAI): transforming “theory” on Inclusion into concrete actions  (Breezy Ocaña Flaquer)
  
• 20:00: Accessible Astronomy: How to adapt activities for blind and visually impaired learners using low cost materials  (Noreen Grice)
  
• 20:15: Dedoscopio, an inclusive project dedicated to bringing tactile astronomy talks  (Carla Fuentes-Muñoz)
  
• 20:30: The path to a more accessible and inclusive future of meetings in astronomy (Vanessa Moss)
  
• 20:45: Closing of the Workshop
  

Posters Exhibition during all the session 

Keynote Speakers: 

Stavros Katsanevas:

Professor exceptional class at University Paris Diderot, and the director of the European Gravitational Observatory (2018-). He has served as director of the Laboratory of Astroparticle Physics and Cosmology (APC, 2014-2017), and co-director of the Laboratory of excellence UnivEarhs, an interdisciplinary collaboration between APC and the Institute de la Physique du Globe de Paris (IPGP), along themes also developed in APOGEIA. He has also served as deputy director of the National Institute of Nuclear and Particle Physics (IN2P3) of CNRS responsible for Astroparticle Physics and Cosmology (2002-2012), coordinator of the EU funded ERANET ASPERA (2006-2012) gathering the European agencies funding Astroparticle Physics and first chairman of the European Consortium of Astroparticle Physics (APPEC) (2012-2015). His scientific contributions (close to 400 publications), concern Particle Physics at CERN and Fermilab, beam design (CERN to Gran Sasso), Astroparticle, applications (smart sensors, medical physics) and phenomenological studies and simulation. Stavros is the coordinator of the REINFORCE program. 

More info

Gary Foran:

Staff member at Swinburne University of Technology, Australia. His field of research is galaxy formation and evolution. With the aim of understanding the physical processes behind the appearance and environment of galaxies, he uses spectroscopy to study the intrinsic and extrinsic properties of galaxies in the early universe.

As a teenager growing up in Sydney he had night-blindness. He was able to obtain his PhD in chemistry. In 1992 he was one of the foundation team members of the Synchrotron project, which generates powerful X-rays to analyse the molecular structure of various substances, and he worked in that field for more than 20 years. But after he turned 40, his visual field began collapsing inwards. After his retirement in 2010, it was in 2015 that Garry heard a radio interview with some of the astrophysics team from Swinburne University. He approached the team which was fantastically supportive, particularly who was his supervisor, Professor Jeff Cooke. He started a new line of work,  collaborating on refining  sonification methods with the help of Jeff Hannam, a sound designer at RMIT University.

More info

María del Carmen Argudo Fernández:

Astronomer from the  Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaiso and PhD from the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC) and University of Granada (UGR), Spain (2013). Her areas of interest in her research are the Galaxy formation and evolution, the effects of the environment on galaxies, Galaxy interactions, Star formation and Active galaxies. She leads the project AstroBVI (Astronomy Educational Kit for the visually impaired community in Central and South America) is an educational inclusion project funded by the Office of Astronomy for Development of the International Astronomical Union. BVI stands for the Blind and Visually Impaired community, who are often excluded from educational and outreach activities in relation to visually intensive areas of knowledge, as in the case of the astronomy. The goal of AstroBVI is to make Astronomy in general, and galaxies in particular, more accessible to schoolchildren with visual impairments.

More info

Danya Thompson:

As Planetarium Director she has provided support and guidance for all planetarium activities at Ball State University since 2012. She holds a MS in Physics and has over 10 years’ experience in STEM outreach.

Ms. Thompson has created various live planetarium programs and has worked on over 8 full-length fulldome planetarium programs in various roles such as: script writer, director, program manager, 3D content programmer, sound recorder and editor. Two of her programs, “Saturn & Beyond” and “Halloween: Celestial Origins,” are available for planetariums world-wide. Ms. Thompson has worked on various planetarium related projects including “A Study on Vulnerability, Power, and Connection in the Planetarium,” “Fostering Scientists in the Dome: Cultivating the Characteristics of a Scientist,” “GIS Data to Planetarium Dome,” “To the Stars and Back: Exploring Our Planetary Backyard – Summer Science Camp for Middle School Girls at Ball State University and Pre-service Teacher Field Experience for Multicultural Education,” and “The Charles W. Brown Planetarium STEM Hands-On Activity Stations.”.

More info

The registration is closed. Nevertheless, we invite you to follow the event that will be live-streamed in the Youtube channel of the National Astronomical Observatory of Colombia and also embedded in this website, and share it in your social networks by using the hashtag  #2WAI

Contributions (talks and posters) will be published in Proceedings (digital version) in the Revista Mexicana de Astronomía y Astrofísica – Serie de Conferencias.  

Deadline to submit the manuscript is January 15th, 2022. It should be written in english and limited to 10 pages for invited talks, 5 pages for oral contributions and  3 pages for poster contributions.

The information about templates and requirements for the contributions can be found here.

If any question please contact:  Santiago Vargas (chair)   svargasd @ unal.edu.co

Please click on every title to view the corresponding poster.

1. Touch the Stars 
By: Claudia Romagnoli, Viviana Sebben

2.  My experience 
By: Madan Sriramreddy

3. Astronomy for special education needs
By: Exodus Cl Sit  

4.  LightSound: Accessibility and Awareness for Upcoming Solar Eclipses
By: Allyson Bieryla, Sóley Hyman

5. El universo en palabras. Audio description as an inclusive resource Astroaccesible
By: Enrique Pérez Montero, Celia Barnés Castaño, Emilio J. García

6.  Voices that come out of the hands: Astronomy for the deaf 
By: Marcos Rincon Voelzke, Bruno Rocha Xavier, Orlando Rodrigues Ferreira

7. An application of sonification as an alternative to the accessibility of astronomical images for the visually impaired
By: Aurellio Deandra, Mahasena Putra, Miranti Indar Mandasari, Chatief Kunjaya, Dhani Herdiwijaya, Aprilia  

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8.  SonoUno web interface for astronomical data sonification
By: Johana Casado, Gonzalo De la Vega, Martín Domínguez, Beatriz García

9. Astronomy Education Research:  Efforts Towards Teaching for Diversity and Inclusivity in South Africa 
By: Tshiamiso Makwela 

10.  The IAU-Women in Astronomy Working Group 
By: Priya Hasan, Mamta Pommier 

11. Motor disabilities in Planetariums and Observatories. IAU Working Group
Ángela Pérez, Ilhuiyolitzin Villicana Pedraza, Dimitri Veras

Astronomy Education Research:  Efforts Towards Teaching for Diversity and Inclusivity in South Africa Astronomy Education Research:  Efforts Towards Teaching for Diversity and Inclusivity in South Africa The IAU-Women in Astronomy Working Group