Art, Science, & Technology
At the intersection of art, science, and technology, few organizations embody transformation as boldly as Leonardo/ISAST. For over half a century, Leonardo has fostered a global network of artists, scientists, technologists, and activists, united by the conviction that creative solutions are crucial to addressing complex problems. Through their groundbreaking CripTech Incubator, Leonardo is showing what happens when artists with disabilities are not only included in these conversations but are positioned as leaders shaping the cultural narratives and technical systems that define our future.
The Role of Ability Central
Ability Central has been crucial to making this work possible. Our partnership ensures that projects like the CripTech Incubator have the infrastructure, resources, and networks to reach their full potential. “Their support has been pivotal. It allows us to provide artists with financial, technical, access, advisory, and educational resources, while also situating the lab within a larger movement for disability arts and activism,” said Vanessa Chang, Director of Programs.
By enabling artists to focus on experimentation and innovation, Ability Central amplifies the impact of Leonardo’s programs across arts and technology, helping these projects reach wider audiences and make a meaningful difference in the field of creative accessibility.
Centering Excluded Voices
What makes Leonardo unique is it’s insistence on placing historically excluded voices at the center of innovation. Chang says,
When technologies are designed through lived experiences of exclusion, they are inherently more adaptive and resilient to human and environmental variations.
Redefining Disability, Technology, & Creativity
Launched in 2021, Leonardo’s CripTech Incubator has redefined how disability, technology, and creativity intersect. Through fellowships, labs, and collaborative research, it has explored everything from the metaverse to artificial intelligence. Past initiatives include the CripTech Metaverse Lab, which invited disabled artists to rethink virtual worlds through participatory, collective access; the Touch Aesthetics Fellowship, which transformed haptics into a language of artistic storytelling; and the CripTech AI Lab, where artists interrogated ableism in AI and prototyped inclusive models for technology’s future. Together, these projects have sparked global conversations about how disability-led innovation can reshape multiple sectors.
The Touch Aesthetics Fellowship
The Touch Aesthetics Fellowship, created with Arizona State University’s Haptics for Inclusion Lab, brought together three artists with various disabilities and collectives to experiment with haptics, disability, and new forms of storytelling. The results were both surprising and deeply inventive.
Olivia Ting’s Field Guide to Decoding Gobbledygook took the everyday challenge of lip-reading and reimagined it as a playful AR and haptic game. Instead of framing accessibility as a barrier, Ting turned it into a system of interaction and creativity.
Antonella Mazzoni’s Blackout suspended visual storytelling and built a narrative architecture through touch. Using haptic effects as “kinesthetic onomatopoeia,” Mazzoni converted sound, texture, and emotion into physical sensations, creating a fully multisensory experience. The project challenges the dominance of visual and auditory modes of storytelling and demonstrates the potential for haptic technologies to serve as a new narrative language accessible to all.
Vanessa Hernández Cruz and Selwa Sweidan’s Crip Haptic Flower Jam blended wearable textiles that carry custom vibro-tactile signals, turning performers into a kind of shared instrument for movement and connection. The piece blends performance, collaboration, and haptic communication, pushing forward both artistic expression and accessibility practices.
These works culminated in a showcase in Los Angeles, allowing audiences to experience firsthand how touch can become a medium of artistic expression and accessible storytelling. The projects not only highlighted the creativity of the artists involved but also demonstrated the transformative potential of investing in disabled-led innovation. Ability Central’s support makes such ambitious programming possible, providing the infrastructure, resources, and connections necessary for these projects to thrive and reach a wider audience.
The CripTech AI Lab
The cohort is developing projects that probe AI’s limits and potential as creative prosthesis, explore sensory and emotional relationships between text and image, playfully simulate the effect of bodily difference in real and virtual space, and examine the consequences of computer vision in medical contexts. In the coming months, participants will engage with guest speakers, present works-in-progress to experts in disability arts, media art, robotics, and AI, and culminate the lab with a virtual exhibition accessible to a global audience. “The support from Ability Central allows us to provide artists with resources to experiment boldly and share their work widely, amplifying the impact of disability-led innovation,” said Chang.
Looking Ahead
The Touch Aesthetics Fellowship will be featured in a gallery published in Leonardo, and the CripTech AI Lab will expand its programming with guest lectures, expert critiques, and collaborative workshops. By year’s end, the lab’s projects will culminate in a public virtual exhibition, providing audiences worldwide with access to groundbreaking work that merges disability, art, and technology.
When Accessibility Leads, Innovation Follows
What sets Leonardo apart is its ability to transform access from a constraint into a catalyst for invention. The organization demonstrates that accessibility-driven design is not simply an ethical imperative; it produces technology that is more adaptable, imaginative, and resilient. “Ability Central’s support enables Leonardo to put its values into action advancing the CripTech Incubator as a generator of groundbreaking work and disability-led innovation across all creative sectors.” says Leonardo/ISAST CEO, Diana Ayton-Shenker.
We believe that complex problems require creative solutions. Leonardo’s CripTech Incubator offers onramps and infrastructure for critical voices to address challenges as an opportunity for creative experimentation, shaping the interdisciplinary ecosystem Leonardo has been leading for nearly six decades.
In a rapidly evolving world of AI, haptics, and immersive experiences, Leonardo and Ability Central are proving a powerful truth: when accessibility leads, innovation follows. Their collaborative work ensures that artists with disabilities are not just participants, but drivers of cultural and technological transformation, modeling a future in which justice, creativity, and inclusion are inseparable.
Learn more about our work and the resources we offer at Ability Central and consider supporting our mission with a donation.
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