<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class="">Dear colleagues - <div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Last weekend at the SHOT and SIGCIS meeting in Philadelphia, the winner of the 2017 Computer History Museum Prize was announced. I’m delighted to share that news and the prize citation with this list. Congratulations Elizabeth Petrick!</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><p class=""><u class=""><strong class="">Winner:</strong></u></p><p class="">Elizabeth Petrick, <a href="https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/content/making-computers-accessible" class=""><em class="">Making Computers Accessible: Disability Rights and Digital Technology </em></a>(Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015).</p><p class=""><u class=""><strong class="">Prize Citation:</strong></u></p><p class="">This is a groundbreaking book on an understudied topic in the history
of computing. Petrick integrates histories of technology and civil
rights and demonstrates the interaction of technological, social, and
legal supports for accessibility. She uses disability studies frameworks
to highlight how the shifting paradigms of “normality” and
“universality” have shaped computer technology. She argues convincingly
that principles of “universal design” that were aimed at making
computers usable for the disabled significantly shaped the evolution of
personal computer technology in general—thereby making the larger
historiographic point that we can’t tell complete or accurate histories
of computing without including (dis)ability as a factor. The book is
clearly written and well-researched, with a helpful appendix on her
sources and methods.</p><p class=""><u class=""><strong class="">About the Computer History Museum Prize:</strong></u></p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="">The Computer History Museum Prize is
awarded to the author of an outstanding book in the history of computing
broadly conceived, published during the prior three years. The prize of
$1,000 is awarded by SIGCIS, the Special Interest Group for Computers,
Information and Society. SIGCIS is part of the Society for the History
of Technology. </p><p style="text-align: justify;" class="">In 2012 the prize was endowed in
perpetuity through a generous bequest from the estate of Paul Baran, a
legendary computer innovator and entrepreneur best known for his work to
develop and promote the packet switching approach on which modern
networks are built. Baran was a longtime supporter of work on the
history of information technology and named the prize to celebrate the
contributions of the Computer History Museum to that field.</p></div><div class="">For more information and list of previous winners, please visit: <a href="http://www.sigcis.org/node/406" class="">http://www.sigcis.org/node/406</a></div><div class=""><br class=""></div></body></html>