December 23rd, 2020
Michael Buholzer/AFP
For some of us, being forced to stay home and work remotely via video conferences was a temporary reprieve from our daily commute. But for Jonathan Lee, Zoom was a life changer. Lee, 28, is a paraplegic who uses walking aids to get around, and being able to rely on video calls greatly reduced the challenges involved in getting to school.
It’s not just the elimination of a commute that made his life easier. When he’s making his way to classes, it’s impossible for Lee to walk and text while gripping onto his crutches, and if he doesn’t have a headset he can’t easily hold his phone up to speak either. Even when he has headphones on, Lee said today’s speech recognition still isn’t accurate enough to rely on.
The Smithsonian s National Museum of Asian Art, comprising the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, has been allotted a $2.5m grant From Lilly Endowment Inc. to support a portfolio of projects that highlight the intersection of Asian art and religious diversity Freer and Sackler staff
As cultural and academic institutions across the US struggle to make ends meet in a dispiriting Covid-19 landscape, a phalanx of grant-makers at federal and city agencies and nonprofit foundations are stepping up to assist them in both stopgap and transformative ways.
Today the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) announced $32.8m in grants to support 213 humanities projects in 44 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Among them are a partnership between the University of Hawaii, Honolulu, and the American Council of the Blind and Helen Keller National Center to develop best practices for creating audio descriptions of humanities collectio