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By Mu-Yen Chan, PhD Student and Presenter, Social Justice Education, OISE of the University of Toronto

Read more about Disability Matters ∞ Ways of Perceiving: International Conversations.

At the morning panel of the Disability Matters: Ways of Perceiving conference, Dr. Tanya Titchkosky, in her opening reflection, reimagined the infinity symbol (∞) not as a scientific abstraction, but as a symbol of relationality rooted in Anishinaabe worldviews. Dr. Titchkosky invited the audience to think of disability and perception as infinitely connected. Building on this, Dr. Dan Goodley and Dr. Rebecca Lawthom used Thomas King’s image of pushing a boat back into the ocean to describe their efforts to push back against university bureaucracy while co-producing knowledge with disabled people’s organizations, fostering community through friction. They proposed “frictional politics” as both an analytic and a method for de-pathologizing academic spaces. Christina Lee and Ankita Mishra added a powerful critique of current models of knowledge exchange, arguing that disabled communities already share valuable forms of knowledge in daily life—through mutual care, access coordination, and storytelling—despite such knowledge being undervalued or ignored by academic metrics. Together, the speakers responded to Dr. Titchkosky’s reimagining of the infinity symbol, offering a living and ongoing practice of relationality, resistance, and care within and beyond the university.

During the relaxed lunchtime session, Dr. Leroy Baker and Dr. Dan Goodley shared brief but thought-provoking book presentations. Dr. Baker introduced Navigating Complexities: The Intersectionality of Blackness and Disability in Higher Education, drawing from his experiences of childhood trauma in Jamaica and systemic racism in Canada. He emphasized education as a tool for critiquing structural injustice and called for rethinking “accommodation” to foster truly inclusive academic spaces. Dr. Goodley presented the third edition of Disability Studies: An Interdisciplinary Introduction, highlighting the diverse and evolving directions of disability studies. 

In the afternoon, one of the two “Community Conversations as Works in Progress” sessions—titled The Poiesis of Perception—featured four speakers: Miggy Esteban, Matida Daffeh, Jeff Hall, and Hilary Pearson. Each offered deeply personal stories that reimagined perception not as passive sensing, but as poiesis—a creative, embodied process. Matida reflected on the “whispers” surrounding her deaf son in Gambian society, showing how care, protection, and stigma were entangled in subtle forms of everyday perception. Jeff revisited his adolescent reaction to the Tracy Latimer case, uncovering how ableist media narratives taught him to grieve some lives less than others. Hilary shared her experience of being seen as an “unreliable witness” in legal contexts due to hearing loss, revealing how institutional systems question disabled credibility. Miggy redefined rest as a radical, mad, diasporic gesture—where stillness becomes resistance to normative rhythms. Across all four narratives, disability was not framed as a lack or a tragedy, but as a generative site of knowledge, relation, and poetic insight. 

In the Unending Relations session, introduced by Dr. Tanya Titchkosky, the infinity sign (∞) was used as a metaphor to explore the non-linear, entangled relationship between disability and medicine. Rather than framing these as oppositional forces, the session invited us to consider how all things are interconnected through complex interrelation. Lisa Fernandez examined how the term disability is absent from the Dean’s Reports and undergraduate course calendar at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, revealing a cultural imaginary where disability is rendered unmentionable in medical education. Paola Madrigal shared the encounter with Mad Studies in a public health course, which challenged dominant psychiatric narratives and invited relational, critical thinking about madness. Mu-Yen Chan explored what happens when medical doctors are also disabled, highlighting the cultural tension between expectations of professional capability and assumptions of dependency. In closing, Dr. Elaine Cagulada reminded us that repetition is not failure, but a form of consciousness—one that invites us to return to and question our assumptions. Dr. Cagulada urged us to recognize that medicine and disability are not separate realms but are deeply interwoven, calling us to dwell within this tension and engage our collective lives more attentively.

In the closing keynote, retired Disability Studies professor and blind storyteller Dr. Rod Michalko offered a profound reflection on the lived and conceptual dimensions of disability. Drawing from his experiences as a blind academic and decades of scholarship, he described disability not as something one seeks, but as something one “stumbles into”—a metaphor for the unexpected and disruptive nature of encountering disability in everyday life. Challenging simplistic narratives, he quoted musician Rhiannon Giddens: “Simple stories are usually wrong—and not good for you.” Rather than rushing to fix or define disability, Dr. Michalko encouraged listeners to pause, hesitate, and approach disability as a teacher—one that invites us to reimagine how we know and relate to the world. Quoting Tanya Titchkosky, he emphasized that accessibility is not merely about logistics but involves socio-political judgments about participation and belonging. Drawing on Rosie Braidotti’s reflections on Sandra Harding, he framed disability experience as a site of epistemological inquiry. His keynote did not conclude with definitive answers but extended an invitation: to stay with the discomfort of uncertainty, and to learn from the stumble rather than leaping over it.