Crip News v.214
AI and care, new works, other news, calls, and events.
NEWS
AI and the Care Crisis
On Nov. 18, 2025, the U.S. Administration for Community Living (ACL) announced the Caregiver Artificial Intelligence Prize Competition. Teams of “innovators” working on “AI-enabled tools to support both family caregivers and the direct care workforce” will compete for up to $2 million.
At a time when the Trump administration attempts to insulate AI companies against regulation while exposing the care workforce to new forms of uncertainty, the announcement signals how federal officials intend to use AI in the “Make America Healthy Again” agenda. The vagueness about what even constitutes “AI” in this context is one indication that the publicity around the campaign may be more important than its purported goals.
While seeming to address a labor crisis that has long been at the fore of disabled organizing, the stunt also tacitly justifies cuts to the ACL itself: the division was among the hit hardest by RFK Jr.’s April 2025 reorganization of the Department of Health and Human Services. The ACL now operates with about half its staff and few of its former leaders and policy experts.
Scholars of AI and disability point out many ways that AI “solutions” eclipse the concerns of disabled communities. Dr. Louise Hickman pointed to the disability-led campaign Stop Oxevision to halt the U.K. tech company’s system of infrared sensors and cameras for remote patient monitoring in psychiatric hospitals.
“This kind of system,” Hickman recently told Crip News, “can easily become a substitute for nursing staff actually being present and attentive on the ward. Instead of improving care, surveillance tools can distance staff from patients and deepen power imbalances, especially in psychiatric and institutional settings.”
Dr. Rua Williams highlighted examples of “Electronic Visit Verification” that rely on surveillance and restriction of disabled people to their homes in order to receive certain kinds of assistance. Beyond the effects of these technologies on the nature of caregivers’ work, they introduce mechanisms of control and coercion.
“More and more, technological ‘progress’ is pitched as a solution to a crisis better solved by investment in human infrastructure — accessible public life, well paid nursing staff, sufficient care hours, etc.,” Williams said. “These technological ‘solutions’ do not result in better inclusion of disabled people into public life, but amount to more and more opaque algorithmic regimes of surveillance and management.
As millions of people in the U.S. are dealing with the personal costs of massive cuts to federal healthcare funding, the “Caregiver AI Prize Competition” is a telling distraction from what’s at stake in AI boosterism. “We need a responsible approach to AI adoption,” Dr. Hickman says, “in our homes, workplaces, and care systems—one that keeps care human-centred and led by disabled people’s priorities.”
This story was reported with Clayton Jarrard, a graduate student at New York University’s XE: Experimental Humanities & Social Engagement program. Clayton works in applied social research and policy implementation and is also a host for New Book Network’s podcast channels in Disability studies and LGBTQ+ studies.
New Works
The newest issue of The American Poetry Review (vol. 55, no. 1) includes “Abolition Medicine: Liberatory Poetics of the Crip, Black Botanical” by heidi andrea restrepo rhodes and “I Learned to Love Me Later On,” a conversation between Philip Metres and Therí Alyce Pickens.
Scout, an Australia-based library professional and scholar, recently published “Building and governing for access in disruption: Open publishing, disability culture, and library leadership.”
Beyond the Visual, “the UK’s first major sculpture exhibition in which blind and partially blind practitioners are central to the curatorial process and make up the majority of participating artists,” is up at the Henry Moore Institute (Leeds) through April 19.
The American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) recently published “Building Disability Economic Power Through AAPD’s Internship Program” on “what truly moves the needle on disability employment and economic power.”
The UK-based IN/Visible National Disabled Women’s Arts Collective recently published a chronicle of Rising in Our Power, “a landmark interdisciplinary artistic project” at MIMA (Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art) that took place in February 2025.
In Other News…
United States Artists recently announced the 43 organizations selected by artist who received Disability Futures Fellowships.
Multitude Films, FWD-Doc, and Untitled Pennhurst Film recently launched their Disabled Nonfiction Producers Apprenticeship, a 9-month program offering “holistic producing support, creative project incubation, and tailored professional development.” This inaugural fellows are Andie Madsen, Gabriel “Gabo” Ponte Fleary, Maya Wise, and Vega Darling.
CALLS
Cuéntame is partnering with Brooklyn Arts Exchange to build a DJ cohort of all Disabled and/or Queer/Trans DJs through monthly classes starting in February.
Disabled artist Vanessa Hernández Cruz has an open call for 5 QTBIPOC disabled virtual dancers to perform an evening length work set to premiere in the Fall 2027 in Los Angeles, CA and touring nationally in 2028. Apply by Jan. 16.
Sista Creatives Rising and Clean Air Events are seeking 3 musical acts to feature as part of “A Celebration of Black Artistry" taking place Feb. 15 in Seattle, WA. Apply by Jan. 10.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art (NYC) is hiring the Mary Jaharis Managing Educator for Access.
Tom Olin, documentarian of the disability rights movement, needs support while navigating medical hurdles. Donate now.
Researchers at Brandeis University are looking to interview parents, grandparents, and caregivers of children with disabilities ages 15-25 years old about their opinions on the barriers their children face in getting sexual and reproductive health information and services.
EVENTS
GHOST BARRELS
Thursday, Jan. 8, 7 - 9pm ET, in-person at Recess Gallery (NYC)
GHOST BARRELS is the final event and closing performance of the Sick Center at Recess. Artists lu yim, funto omojola, and Anna RG premiere an experimental work that invites audiences into a fragmentary mapping—circling sound, history, and imagination to get closer to something just out of reach.Enfreakment (Homecoming)
Thursday, Jan. 8, 19:00 - 21:00, in-person at Gropius Bau (Berlin)
What do we need to unlearn in order to truly learn how to care? This is the question Perel explores in their performance Enfreakment (Homecoming), kicking off the Spätschicht x Schwules Museum programme. As an intervention, it will unfold over the evening within the exhibition Diane Arbus: Konstellationen.Disability (Is Not a Bad Word)
Tuesday, Jan. 6, 6:30 - 8:30pm ET, online
A peer-led space for disabled and neurodivergent adults to discuss daily life and find support from their community, organized by Basically Wonderful. Topic: Ableism during the (hard) holidays.
Brilliant framing on how the prize competition obscures the actual crisis. The pivot from staffing and investment to AI feels like classic misdirection when the core issue is structural undervaluation of care labor itself. I've noticed similar patterns when tech gets positioned as neutral problem-solving instead of as another layer of monitoring that reinforces existing power imbalances, especially aroundhome-based services. The connection to ACL's own gutting really drives home the absurdity of the moment.
Re: Your AI reporting…Well done!