Human Stories: A Conversation with Rebekah Taussig
Thursday, August 21, 2025 | 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM Eastern Time | 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM Central Time
Host: Institute for Human-Centered Design (IHCD)
Format: Free Online Event on Zoom
Note: Register on Eventbrite to Receive the Zoom Link. The Zoom link will be shared via Eventbrite in the days leading up to the event.
If you have any questions or concerns or would like to request an accommodation, please email us at communications@IHCDesign.org.
CART captioning will be provided.
All of our webinars are recorded and will be uploaded to our media archives at https://www.humancentereddesign.org/media-archives
Description:
We humans want and need stories. They help us to pay attention and survive. They bind us together by helping us to recognize what we share. In times of turmoil or trouble, stories can lend us hope and keep us going.
Disability is an ordinary human experience that most everyone will experience if they are lucky enough not to die young. The stories of living with a disability may begin before we are born, happen in the instant of an injury or take shape slowly as a set of conditions acquire a name that becomes part of who we are. Disability may be evident to anyone or completely invisible. But it inevitably becomes a part of the story.
Rebekah Taussig tells great stories about “The view from my ordinary, resilient, disabled body” (cover of Rebakah’s book, Sitting Pretty). The Institute for Human Centered Design (IHCD) is celebrating the 35th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) with this event hosted by Rebekkah, our favorite story-teller. We are also inviting 35 people with disabilities to tell their stories via a short captioned video recorded over Zoom or in our Boston studio. We will share a selection of those stories during the Human Stories webcast. We will make all of them available from our website.
If you are interested in sharing your Human Story, please reach out: https://tinyurl.com/HumanStoriesIHCD
About the speaker
Rebekah Taussig, Ph.D.
Rebekah Taussig is a Kansas City writer and speaker who received her doctorate in English from the University of Kansas with an emphasis in Creative Nonfiction and Disability Studies. Bolstered by academic knowledge and personal experience, she strives to tell stories that enhance and complicate the way we think about disability. Author of the books Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body and We Are the Scrappy Ones, you can find her writing regularly in TIME and on her Instagram @sitting_pretty and substack This Too. She regularly travels the country, speaking with universities, corporations, and medical communities about the power of disability storytelling and representation. You can also hear her voice each week as she co-hosts the podcast Scratch That: Parenting and Re-Parenting Off Script
English