0:00:00.680,0:00:03.320
Hi, Everyone. Thank you for being here.

0:00:03.320,0:00:05.720
It's my great pleasure and privilege to introduce today's speakers.

0:00:09.420,0:00:11.580
Liz Ellcessor has been, since 2012,

0:00:11.580,0:00:15.760
an Assistant Professor in the Media School at Indiana University, Bloomington,

0:00:16.200,0:00:18.440
as well as an affiliate faculty member

0:00:18.820,0:00:20.180
in the department of

0:00:20.180,0:00:22.200
of Gender and Women's Studies in the

0:00:22.200,0:00:23.220
Cultural Studies program.

0:00:23.600,0:00:24.160
However

0:00:24.160,0:00:26.620
She will be starting a position in the Department of Media Studies

0:00:26.640,0:00:28.640
at the University of Virginia

0:00:29.180,0:00:30.540
very, very shortly.

0:00:30.680,0:00:32.479
Liz works at the intersection of

0:00:32.479,0:00:34.900
Cultural Studies, Media Studies

0:00:35.220,0:00:36.900
and Disability Studies.

0:00:36.900,0:00:39.540
Her research and teaching interests include

0:00:39.700,0:00:42.660
Media history, access and literacy as well as

0:00:42.660,0:00:45.220
social media, participatory culture,

0:00:45.220,0:00:47.220
celebrity and performance of the self.

0:00:49.260,0:00:55.140
She is the author of "Restricted Access: media, disability and the politics of participation"

0:00:55.280,0:00:56.560
from NYU press, last year,

0:00:56.720,0:00:58.800
and co-editor with Bill Kirkpatrick

0:01:02.160,0:01:04.319
of "Disability Media Studies",

0:01:05.720,0:01:07.800
which is forthcoming from NYU.

0:01:09.260,0:01:10.220
Meryl Alper is

0:01:10.220,0:01:12.620
an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at

0:01:13.900,0:01:16.280
Northeastern University and a faculty associate here at

0:01:16.280,0:01:17.760
The Berkman Klein Center.

0:01:18.120,0:01:22.280
Prior to joining the faculty at Northeastern

0:01:22.280,0:01:25.400
she earned her Doctorate and Master's degrees

0:01:25.400,0:01:28.660
from the Annenburg School of Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California.

0:01:28.660,0:01:31.220
Meryl has worked for over a decade in the Children's media industry.

0:01:32.240,0:01:34.700
As an undergraduate at Northwestern she

0:01:34.700,0:01:37.120
she was the lab assistant manager in the NSF-funded

0:01:38.780,0:01:40.300
Children's Digital Media Center/

0:01:40.840,0:01:42.040
Digital Kids Lab.

0:01:42.040,0:01:44.760
She interned with the education and research

0:01:44.760,0:01:46.100
department at Sesame Workshop

0:01:46.420,0:01:47.220
in New York.

0:01:47.220,0:01:48.960
Maybe you've heard of it. [Laughter from audience].

0:01:49.760,0:01:51.840
Post graduation, she worked in

0:01:53.920,0:01:56.400
LA as a research manager for Nick Jr.

0:01:56.400,0:01:58.600
conducting formative research for

0:01:58.600,0:02:00.360
the Emmy-nominated educational

0:02:00.360,0:02:01.760
pre-school television series

0:02:02.340,0:02:04.200
Ni Hao, Ki Ian

0:02:04.200,0:02:05.620
and the Fresh Beat Band.

0:02:06.000,0:02:08.800
Meryl is the author of "Digital Youth with Disabilities",

0:02:08.800,0:02:10.820
MIT Press, 2014,

0:02:11.440,0:02:12.720
and "Giving Voice:

0:02:14.200,0:02:16.860
mobile communication, disability and inequality",

0:02:16.980,0:02:18.420
MIT Press, this year.

0:02:19.700,0:02:22.060
You may have also seen her writing in The Guardian, The Atlantic

0:02:22.820,0:02:24.420
Motherboard and Wired.

0:02:24.920,0:02:26.520
Ryan Boudish is a Senior Researcher

0:02:26.520,0:02:28.840
at the Berkman Klein Center.

0:02:29.080,0:02:32.040
Ryan joined the Berkman Klein Center in 2011

0:02:32.040,0:02:34.500
as a Fellow and the Project Director of

0:02:35.320,0:02:36.860
Herdict.

0:02:38.480,0:02:40.540
In his time here Ryan has contributed policy and legal analysis

0:02:40.540,0:02:42.160
to a number of projects and

0:02:42.180,0:02:43.540
reports and he's led

0:02:43.540,0:02:45.320
several significant initiatives related to

0:02:45.320,0:02:47.480
internet censorship, corporate transparency about

0:02:48.280,0:02:50.660
government surveillance and multi

0:02:50.660,0:02:52.600
stakeholder governance mechanism

0:02:52.800,0:02:55.760
I should also say that Meryl and Liz have each

0:02:55.760,0:02:58.140
published outstanding books in the past year.

0:02:58.880,0:03:02.000
They're in the center of my field, at least, and

0:03:02.120,0:03:04.360
while "Giving Voice" by Meryl and

0:03:04.360,0:03:06.480
"Restricted Access" by Liz

0:03:06.800,0:03:10.320
offer rigorous analyses of lives lived with disabilities

0:03:10.780,0:03:12.060
in the 21st century

0:03:12.060,0:03:15.400
they're also offering very fundamental reconsiderations

0:03:15.400,0:03:16.700
of what it means to study

0:03:17.000,0:03:19.720
media and communication and technology

0:03:19.820,0:03:22.300
and both books are totally worth your time

0:03:22.760,0:03:25.000
and it's a great privilege to have

0:03:25.080,0:03:26.360
you all here today.

0:03:27.040,0:03:29.040
So, I'm going to hand it over to

0:03:30.500,0:03:33.260
Meryl and we'll start today's event.

0:03:46.000,0:03:46.640
Awesome.

0:03:46.980,0:03:50.580
So Liz and I, we're playing off one another a little bit in

0:03:50.800,0:03:52.880
the sense that each of our books

0:03:53.740,0:03:55.500
focuses particularly on a

0:03:55.680,0:03:57.520
key term. Mine, "voice" and

0:03:57.540,0:03:58.980
Liz's, "Access", and

0:03:59.980,0:04:02.940
As you might have read in the introduction to

0:04:02.980,0:04:04.820
this event on the event site

0:04:05.520,0:04:08.640
"Can we talk?", we think, is a really evocative question.

0:04:08.640,0:04:11.800
We'll pull in threads from each of our discussions

0:04:13.980,0:04:16.300
It pulls upon ability, collective

0:04:16.300,0:04:18.200
notions and actions of what it means to participate

0:04:20.140,0:04:22.380
So my presentation is Can We Talk?

0:04:22.980,0:04:23.860
About Voice.

0:04:26.980,0:04:27.780
So in my work

0:04:27.780,0:04:30.000
just to pull together what Dylan so graciously

0:04:30.000,0:04:32.020
said. I study the social implications

0:04:32.020,0:04:34.580
of communication technology with a focus on

0:04:34.740,0:04:37.140
the role of digital and mobile media

0:04:37.260,0:04:39.100
in the lives of young people

0:04:39.100,0:04:41.560
but particularly in the lives of young people with developmental

0:04:41.560,0:04:42.200
disabilities.

0:04:42.860,0:04:44.460
So that's in particular

0:04:45.480,0:04:46.760
autistic youth and

0:04:46.760,0:04:49.240
young people with significant communication

0:04:49.540,0:04:50.420
impairments

0:04:50.680,0:04:53.560
particularly related to something called

0:04:53.560,0:04:55.040
childhood apraxia of speech, which is basically

0:04:55.040,0:04:58.040
when the brain has difficulty coordinating the

0:04:58.040,0:04:59.180
the body parts that are needed.

0:04:59.860,0:05:00.420
to talk.

0:05:00.420,0:05:02.840
So I think about communication across different

0:05:03.360,0:05:03.860
levels

0:05:04.880,0:05:08.960
So some of these young people, instead of talking in ways that

0:05:08.960,0:05:10.780
you might think of in the traditional sense

0:05:12.240,0:05:15.040
use some thing like what Stephen Hawkings

0:05:18.260,0:05:19.460
uses, but instead

0:05:20.960,0:05:22.960
nowadays instead of having to

0:05:22.960,0:05:26.340
necessarily use a device that is bigger, more expensive

0:05:26.940,0:05:29.580
breaks, and takes a long time to replace

0:05:29.580,0:05:33.420
you could potentially use what I have pictured on the bottom here

0:05:34.560,0:05:36.800
is an iPad with this one app called

0:05:37.320,0:05:38.520
Proloquo2Go and

0:05:42.060,0:05:43.340
you can select text

0:05:43.340,0:05:46.080
and icons and it will fill in this top white

0:05:46.500,0:05:48.580
bar and you can press the bar and

0:05:48.940,0:05:50.460
speech will be output.

0:05:50.460,0:05:54.060
The language, the software is a little less sophisticated

0:05:54.180,0:05:55.940
than what can be created in

0:05:55.940,0:05:57.580
a bigger computer than that but

0:05:58.440,0:05:59.880
it can do a lot of work.

0:06:00.400,0:06:04.000
So with those unfamiliar, some of these technologies

0:06:04.000,0:06:07.240
sometimes they're called voice output communication aids,

0:06:08.060,0:06:09.900
speech generating devices,

0:06:09.960,0:06:13.640
or augmentative and alternative communication devices.

0:06:13.640,0:06:15.600
Which is ironically a mouthful to say.

0:06:16.240,0:06:18.720
So I'm just going to say AAC for short.

0:06:22.440,0:06:25.320
So because the users of these technologies

0:06:25.320,0:06:27.480
don't talk in the traditional sense

0:06:27.480,0:06:30.380
and because they use speech generating devices to communicate

0:06:31.340,0:06:35.020
the popular press has historically referred to

0:06:35.020,0:06:37.340
these types of technologies in a way

0:06:37.340,0:06:39.180
in which the users of them get

0:06:39.600,0:06:41.120
figured as voiceless.

0:06:42.960,0:06:44.560
So the top headline says

0:06:44.680,0:06:46.200
it's from the LA Times

0:06:46.200,0:06:48.800
It says Electronic Help for the Handicapped

0:06:48.800,0:06:51.000
The Voiceless Break Their Silence.

0:06:51.000,0:06:54.620
That's a headline about a technology called the Canon Communicator.

0:06:55.060,0:06:57.780
So Canon the company you might think of as cameras

0:06:57.780,0:06:59.280
produced a device that was

0:06:59.980,0:07:01.660
specifically focused on

0:07:01.660,0:07:02.660
voice and voice output.

0:07:05.080,0:07:07.880
Or, sorry, electronic voice generation.

0:07:10.420,0:07:12.580
2012, pretty similar headline.

0:07:12.920,0:07:16.600
This is about the iPad giving voice to kids with autism.

0:07:17.180,0:07:20.140
But the question I'm really interested in is

0:07:20.140,0:07:22.880
What does it mean for technology to give voice

0:07:22.880,0:07:23.860
to the voiceless?

0:07:23.860,0:07:27.520
And who does that phrase actually help or hurt in the process.

0:07:27.520,0:07:31.140
So to answer that question I'm going to discuss three things.

0:07:31.140,0:07:34.460
I'm going to talk first about the broader significance of this phrase

0:07:34.460,0:07:36.120
"Giving voice to the voiceless"

0:07:36.120,0:07:40.500
It's a phrase you might have heard but not necessarily taken a critical angle towards

0:07:41.300,0:07:44.460
Why it's an important concept to critique, especially

0:07:44.460,0:07:45.640
for people with disabilities.

0:07:45.720,0:07:49.240
And third, how thinking differently about voice and

0:07:49.240,0:07:51.360
voicelessness in this way, I think, can

0:07:51.360,0:07:53.080
more broadly create meaningful change

0:07:53.080,0:07:55.780
around technology and ethical considerations

0:07:55.780,0:07:56.580
more broadly.

0:07:58.520,0:08:00.040
Speaking of ethics...

0:08:01.060,0:08:02.900
So before I go much further I

0:08:02.900,0:08:04.300
also want to make clear that

0:08:04.300,0:08:07.540
I do not personally identify as having a disability.

0:08:08.520,0:08:10.600
I am also a white, cis, straight

0:08:10.600,0:08:12.040
upper-middle class woman.

0:08:12.040,0:08:15.020
So I'm sensitive to the power inherent in interpreting and

0:08:15.020,0:08:16.420
sharing the experiences of others

0:08:16.420,0:08:17.560
through my analytic lens.

0:08:18.460,0:08:22.120
But I also believe that disability is at the heart of the human experience.

0:08:23.040,0:08:25.600
I think this picture here gets at that.

0:08:25.640,0:08:27.880
So it's a picture taken by Tom Olin

0:08:28.460,0:08:29.580
at an ADA march in the early 90s.

0:08:32.400,0:08:34.480
People of various racial backgrounds,

0:08:35.600,0:08:37.840
people with various physical

0:08:37.840,0:08:39.500
and what not disabilities marching under a banner

0:08:41.120,0:08:45.680
of Martin Luther King Jr.'s quote, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,"

0:08:45.680,0:08:50.340
So I think that something that is really brought out in this picture

0:08:50.340,0:08:53.200
is that despite structures that systematically

0:08:53.220,0:08:56.580
isolate and remove people with disabilities from

0:08:56.580,0:08:58.980
the center of society, we have to think about

0:08:58.980,0:09:02.240
the ways in which how we define the ways it means to be human

0:09:02.240,0:09:04.460
and then even within that I would say

0:09:04.460,0:09:08.120
because there is the MLK quote here, about the intersections of disability with

0:09:08.120,0:09:11.000
other kinds of identities and other potentialities for marginalization as well.

0:09:13.960,0:09:15.320
With that being said

0:09:15.320,0:09:18.320
What does it mean to give voice to the voiceless?

0:09:18.460,0:09:20.380
What does "giving voice" mean?

0:09:22.000,0:09:24.640
We might locate its origins biblically.

0:09:27.260,0:09:29.500
In the New International version

0:09:29.500,0:09:32.940
Proverbs 31:8 says, Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves

0:09:34.260,0:09:36.900
for the rights of all who are destitute.

0:09:37.080,0:09:41.080
So not only do you get allusions about voice and speaking but

0:09:41.080,0:09:42.560
also a class dimension to this as well.

0:09:44.340,0:09:48.900
We might locate, in terms of how this is trace through different

0:09:48.900,0:09:49.900
professional groups, different

0:09:50.340,0:09:52.180
actors in the public sphere

0:09:52.320,0:09:53.760
journalists. So this

0:09:53.760,0:09:57.580
a screenshot of the Society of Professional Journalists

0:09:57.900,0:09:59.340
their Code of Ethics.

0:09:59.340,0:10:01.940
And one line of this is that journalists

0:10:01.940,0:10:04.260
a key journalistic duty is to be vigilant

0:10:04.260,0:10:07.540
and courageous about holding those with power accountable.

0:10:07.860,0:10:09.780
Give voice to the voiceless.

0:10:10.620,0:10:13.500
Moving from just sort of actors to also thinking about

0:10:14.640,0:10:16.560
other kinds of technologies

0:10:17.460,0:10:20.420
we can think about an endless list of things.

0:10:20.420,0:10:22.260
whether it's civic media, Twitter

0:10:22.260,0:10:25.760
or Open Data, as pictured here, as sort of giving voice.

0:10:26.100,0:10:29.460
This is from the Open Data Institute Summit, 2015.

0:10:29.460,0:10:34.620
The speaker's talk is "Citizen empowerment: giving a voice to the voiceless"

0:10:36.720,0:10:40.160
All too often, though, we consider this background

0:10:41.200,0:10:43.520
disability becomes instrumental

0:10:45.200,0:10:47.280
for another purpose outside of

0:10:47.280,0:10:48.560
just disability focused issues.

0:10:48.840,0:10:51.720
It tends to represent something broken for

0:10:51.740,0:10:53.260
technology to repair.

0:10:53.260,0:10:56.680
So consider, this is Microsoft's Super Bowl commercial

0:10:57.380,0:10:58.020
from 2014

0:10:58.820,0:11:00.580
So long after Apple had its

0:11:00.580,0:11:02.300
big Super Bowl commercial in the 80s

0:11:02.300,0:11:05.680
it took until 2014 for Microsoft to have its entry point

0:11:05.680,0:11:07.520
and disability is front and center here.

0:11:07.620,0:11:10.660
It features NFL player Steve Gleeson who lost

0:11:10.660,0:11:12.740
the ability to produce oral speech due to

0:11:13.340,0:11:15.260
ALS and the ad proclaims that

0:11:15.260,0:11:18.340
the Microsoft Surface Pro, which is pictured here, has

0:11:18.340,0:11:20.000
given voice to the voiceless.

0:11:20.000,0:11:22.940
And this gets exemplified by Gleeson himself

0:11:22.940,0:11:25.200
providing the voiceover for the commercial.

0:11:26.340,0:11:31.620
So we can say, and I don't have the time to play the commercial, but encourage you

0:11:31.720,0:11:33.000
to take a look at it,

0:11:33.540,0:11:34.660
in its entirety,

0:11:34.660,0:11:37.540
but we can say then that giving voice to the voiceless means

0:11:37.540,0:11:38.820
a couple of things. It means

0:11:39.660,0:11:41.980
that voice is used as a metaphor for

0:11:41.980,0:11:43.380
for agency and self-representation

0:11:44.360,0:11:45.880
That voicelessness is

0:11:46.040,0:11:49.000
is imagined as a stable and natural category

0:11:49.320,0:11:52.360
so THE voiceless is a thing that we can locate.

0:11:52.380,0:11:54.540
and as a sort of immutable thing.

0:11:54.680,0:12:00.280
And technology is figured as a direct opportunity, this frictionless opportunity

0:12:01.660,0:12:02.780
for expression.

0:12:05.020,0:12:07.740
So there is a lot to critique about each of

0:12:08.780,0:12:10.220
those kinds of claims

0:12:10.320,0:12:14.000
But why do I think it's particularly important to do so?

0:12:14.220,0:12:16.700
Particularly at this moment in time.

0:12:18.700,0:12:22.220
That's because, based on the ethnographic research

0:12:22.220,0:12:24.380
that I conducted, despite these widespread claims

0:12:24.380,0:12:26.540
to "give voice to the voiceless"

0:12:26.540,0:12:29.400
communication technologies that are intended to

0:12:29.400,0:12:32.280
universally empower are still subject to disempowering

0:12:32.400,0:12:34.240
structural inequalities,

0:12:34.240,0:12:36.980
and especially for people with disabilities.

0:12:38.760,0:12:40.600
So in my book "Giving Voice"

0:12:43.640,0:12:46.640
I argue that efforts to better include disabled individuals

0:12:46.640,0:12:48.920
within society through primarily

0:12:48.920,0:12:50.420
technological interventions

0:12:50.420,0:12:53.500
when all we do is fetishize and focus on the technology,

0:12:53.680,0:12:57.200
for whatever kind of commercial or affective reasons,

0:12:57.660,0:13:02.140
we miss the opportunity to take into account all the other ways

0:13:02.360,0:13:04.360
in which culture, law, policy

0:13:04.360,0:13:06.320
and even the design of these technologies themselves

0:13:07.140,0:13:09.140
can marginalize and exclude.

0:13:09.140,0:13:13.320
So the book is based on a 16 month ethnographic study that I conducted

0:13:14.900,0:13:17.220
of young people who use the iPad and

0:13:17.220,0:13:18.980
that Proloquo2Go app. Kids about 3 to 13.

0:13:20.980,0:13:24.900
I spent some time observing them getting trained how to use

0:13:24.900,0:13:26.980
the technologies at home with speech pathologists

0:13:26.980,0:13:30.420
I followed them to different user groups that young people

0:13:30.420,0:13:32.180
would use to talk to one another

0:13:32.180,0:13:35.040
I went to parent conferences. I also started

0:13:35.040,0:13:38.060
to interview different kinds of assistive technology

0:13:38.060,0:13:41.340
administrators that were in the local Southern California area

0:13:41.580,0:13:43.900
and lots of variations across

0:13:43.900,0:13:46.280
better, more resourced and less resourced school districts

0:13:46.560,0:13:48.160
larger, and small ones,

0:13:48.160,0:13:52.220
to get a sense of what were the other kinds of systems that were shaping the

0:13:52.580,0:13:54.660
adoption, use, or potentially

0:13:54.660,0:13:57.040
the non-use of these technologies.

0:13:58.260,0:14:02.020
So in terms of culture, I'm just going to go through three

0:14:02.020,0:14:03.220
examples quickly.

0:14:04.240,0:14:07.440
Most speech generating devices are in English.

0:14:08.200,0:14:11.160
The ones that are given to kids in US schools.

0:14:11.440,0:14:15.360
At home, that is not something that everyone uses to speak.

0:14:15.580,0:14:18.620
You automatically can create a disconnect there

0:14:19.420,0:14:22.140
between what a home culture is and what a school culture is.

0:14:23.340,0:14:26.320
So one specialist I talked to said "There are hundreds of languages

0:14:26.320,0:14:28.040
in these schools. One of the kids

0:14:28.040,0:14:30.720
I work with, at home, his parents speak Korean.

0:14:31.840,0:14:34.800
Any kind of assistive communication system

0:14:34.800,0:14:37.120
They wouldn't use it because they don't speak it.

0:14:37.120,0:14:39.900
It's a big issue. We are stuck just doing school-based

0:14:39.900,0:14:41.740
which is find, that's our job, but

0:14:41.740,0:14:43.400
it's hard. It's hard to support them acorss

0:14:43.560,0:14:45.400
the board because we can't.

0:14:45.760,0:14:48.720
So we could say that here voice is given but then

0:14:48.720,0:14:50.780
it's also simultaneously muted.

0:14:53.420,0:14:54.700
With respect to law

0:14:54.900,0:14:57.540
Assistive technologies are also quite

0:14:57.780,0:14:59.460
bluntly, borne of a world

0:14:59.460,0:15:02.380
in which half of the people who die at the hands

0:15:03.000,0:15:04.920
of police have a disability.

0:15:04.920,0:15:08.380
There's a 2016 report from the Ruderman Family Foundation if you want to

0:15:08.580,0:15:09.940
take a greater look at that.

0:15:09.940,0:15:12.660
But this is something that Danny's dad Peter tapped into

0:15:13.180,0:15:16.380
when he talked about a fear that a police officer

0:15:16.380,0:15:19.020
might mistake his son reaching for his communication

0:15:19.020,0:15:21.180
device as reaching for a weapon.

0:15:21.180,0:15:23.960
So he said, "I need him to be able to gesture 'yes'

0:15:23.960,0:15:25.540
and 'no'. If a cop's asking

0:15:25.540,0:15:28.480
him questions and has got a gun on him, no cop in the world

0:15:28.520,0:15:30.040
is going to allow him to

0:15:30.280,0:15:31.900
grab a talker."

0:15:32.660,0:15:34.900
So this awareness of the limits of

0:15:34.900,0:15:36.820
any given piece of technology

0:15:36.820,0:15:39.700
in a particular context around justice and injustice

0:15:40.560,0:15:44.240
was something that participants were keenly aware of.

0:15:44.240,0:15:47.200
That is not necessarily something that is reflected in this broader discourse.

0:15:47.200,0:15:50.660
So giving voice can also run the risk of being silenced.

0:15:50.660,0:15:52.780
Quite literally, permanently.

0:15:54.760,0:15:57.400
Lastly, all of this has to be understood

0:15:57.400,0:15:58.980
in a larger policy backdrop

0:15:58.980,0:16:02.780
So school district policies, what I found, tend to promote

0:16:02.780,0:16:05.680
there financial investments protecting those

0:16:05.680,0:16:08.500
more so than promoting students' continued growth.

0:16:08.760,0:16:12.360
This is something that Moira's mom Vanessa related to

0:16:12.360,0:16:14.920
in her story. So, in Southern California, kids

0:16:15.640,0:16:18.200
had been throwing the iPads into pools

0:16:18.200,0:16:21.240
this is what the mom was told and because of that the school

0:16:21.240,0:16:24.160
decided that they were not going to allow the kids to take

0:16:24.160,0:16:26.500
those iPads off campus, even though

0:16:26.500,0:16:29.060
they were federally mandated to provide the child

0:16:29.480,0:16:31.720
a way in which to communicate with others.

0:16:32.440,0:16:35.000
So we're bounding that within the school.

0:16:35.460,0:16:37.700
And the ability to challenge that

0:16:37.700,0:16:41.000
is completely shaped by one's access to other kinds of

0:16:41.000,0:16:43.460
resources: financial aid, legal assistance,

0:16:43.460,0:16:44.600
and social capital.

0:16:45.020,0:16:47.900
So Vanessa said to me, "The school district

0:16:47.900,0:16:50.500
changed their policy and said that iPads only remained

0:16:50.500,0:16:52.340
on campus, which was in voilation of

0:16:52.340,0:16:54.140
Moira's IEP. I wrote them and

0:16:54.920,0:16:56.760
said, 'This is in violation

0:16:56.760,0:16:58.700
I'm asking that you give me a window of opportunity

0:16:59.140,0:17:01.540
to purchase her a device for the home

0:17:02.700,0:17:04.140
One morning I was like

0:17:04.140,0:17:07.420
'I don't want to send this iPad to school.' I of course gave it to her

0:17:07.420,0:17:09.000
and it didn't come home."

0:17:10.160,0:17:13.200
So we could say here also, yes, voice is given,

0:17:13.319,0:17:14.999
but then it's taken away.

0:17:19.920,0:17:22.880
So how does one particular kind of case get at

0:17:22.880,0:17:26.300
some of these larger frameworks with which we understand

0:17:26.300,0:17:27.599
technology and ethics.

0:17:28.040,0:17:31.000
So my overall takeaway is that we should keep

0:17:31.000,0:17:32.560
voices attached to people.

0:17:33.160,0:17:36.520
So I'm drawing here on an historian, Katherine Oft,

0:17:36.820,0:17:38.500
who's at the Smithsonian

0:17:38.500,0:17:42.760
She's written an introduction to this book, this is a picture of the cover,

0:17:42.760,0:17:45.780
It's called "Artificial Parts, Practical Lives

0:17:45.780,0:17:47.640
Modern Histories of Prosthetics"

0:17:47.640,0:17:49.240
and she writes, "Focus on the materiality

0:17:49.240,0:17:51.620
of the body, not only or exclusively

0:17:51.820,0:17:54.460
its abstract and metaphoric meanings.

0:17:54.460,0:17:58.220
Keeping protheses attached to people limits the kinds of

0:17:58.220,0:18:01.060
claims and interpretive leaps a writer can make."

0:18:02.900,0:18:06.180
So I think, as well, staying very close to the body

0:18:06.180,0:18:09.140
staying very close to the material and embodied aspects of

0:18:09.140,0:18:11.560
voice is the only way for us to understand

0:18:12.280,0:18:14.120
the uses and abuses of voice

0:18:14.120,0:18:16.420
in relation to other kinds of inequalities and injustices.

0:18:18.060,0:18:21.100
I will just go through two applications of this

0:18:21.780,0:18:23.220
in terms of what I

0:18:23.220,0:18:26.180
use with my students to talk about politics in two ways.

0:18:26.180,0:18:29.460
Politics in sort of 'Big P Politics', so electoral politics

0:18:29.460,0:18:31.340
And 'little p politics'

0:18:31.860,0:18:34.980
which is power and its various manifestations.

0:18:34.980,0:18:37.320
And those two things are related to one another but its a simple

0:18:37.320,0:18:38.620
way to kind of split it up.

0:18:38.620,0:18:41.960
Trigger warning, there is a picture of Donald Trump

0:18:41.960,0:18:44.380
on the next slide. I'm just letting you know. [Audience laughs].

0:18:45.740,0:18:50.060
So with Big P Politics we need to keep voices attached to citizens

0:18:50.200,0:18:52.840
in our democracy. Despite Donald Trump's

0:18:53.060,0:18:56.660
demagogic insistence that he is literally our voice.

0:18:58.040,0:19:00.520
This is New York Times, July 22, 2016.

0:19:01.260,0:19:03.420
Front page of newyorktimes.com

0:19:03.960,0:19:07.080
This is right after Trump's acceptance speech

0:19:08.740,0:19:09.700
at the INC Convention

0:19:11.380,0:19:16.620
"Trump Pledges..." Headline, it's a picture of Trump smiling and a very large close up version of him

0:19:18.120,0:19:19.960
smiling in the background projected on the screen, and it says

0:19:20.780,0:19:23.900
"Trump Pledges Order and Says: I Am Your Voice"

0:19:24.520,0:19:29.640
Let's think about that in relation to ways in which people with disabilities

0:19:30.400,0:19:33.280
potentially have some quibbles with that.

0:19:34.100,0:19:37.300
So this is a screenshot from CNN's projection of

0:19:38.920,0:19:43.140
at the DNC, a disabled self-advocate

0:19:43.340,0:19:44.840
Anastasia Somoza

0:19:44.840,0:19:47.000
directly responding to Trump's call saying Donald Trump

0:19:48.060,0:19:49.100
doesn't hear me

0:19:49.100,0:19:52.240
he doesn't see me and he definitely doesn't speak for me.

0:19:52.240,0:19:54.660
So this pulling through of ways in which voice

0:19:54.660,0:19:57.140
is getting used and abused in particular ways

0:19:57.140,0:20:00.740
it is not something that people with disabilities are...

0:20:01.140,0:20:03.700
They are the ones that we need to look to

0:20:03.920,0:20:06.880
and draw upon sort of histories of resources

0:20:06.920,0:20:08.520
in which to grapple with

0:20:08.700,0:20:10.620
the uses of language

0:20:10.620,0:20:13.520
in ways that more often exclude than include.

0:20:14.680,0:20:16.440
On a technological aspect

0:20:16.440,0:20:20.880
nowadays there's a lot of interest in voice activated technologies

0:20:21.420,0:20:23.660
so Siri and Alexa

0:20:24.020,0:20:26.720
and in some ways those can be really accessible.

0:20:26.720,0:20:29.560
Those can add, if you have motor limitations, other ways

0:20:29.760,0:20:31.180
to access.

0:20:31.180,0:20:34.600
But we have to think about what kinds of voices get picked up

0:20:35.020,0:20:37.160
This is just a headline that says "Voice is the next big platform..."

0:20:37.160,0:20:41.220
But then here's another headline from Scientific american, "Why Siri won't listen

0:20:41.220,0:20:44.000
to millions of people with disaiblities.

0:20:44.000,0:20:47.180
There are particular ways in which voices are recognized or are not recognized.

0:20:47.880,0:20:51.480
Let alone just the kinds of voices that can be produced

0:20:51.480,0:20:53.240
by a given piece of technology

0:20:55.380,0:20:57.380
So ideas about the normal here

0:20:57.380,0:20:58.880
and what it means to have a voice

0:21:00.000,0:21:02.320
or more critical considerations.

0:21:03.400,0:21:05.560
So to wrap up, technologies that

0:21:05.560,0:21:07.100
give a voice to the voiceless

0:21:07.100,0:21:09.360
can also reproduce structural inequalities

0:21:11.180,0:21:13.180
Having a voice and being heard

0:21:13.180,0:21:14.320
are not necessarily the same things at all.

0:21:14.320,0:21:16.540
And they're also not just about technology.

0:21:16.540,0:21:19.260
But also about social, cultural and economic resources.

0:21:19.260,0:21:22.460
And having access to which is unevenly distributed.

0:21:23.520,0:21:27.120
My book centers the iPad but it's interesting because

0:21:27.120,0:21:30.580
I am really interested in what some people might call

0:21:30.880,0:21:31.840
an edge case or

0:21:31.840,0:21:33.560
you know, a sort of outside case, but

0:21:33.560,0:21:37.060
I really believe there's something to think about marginalization and

0:21:37.800,0:21:39.160
participation that

0:21:39.520,0:21:41.920
is really actually super central to

0:21:41.920,0:21:43.480
to what we're all trying to get at.

0:21:43.480,0:21:46.980
in terms of understanding what it means to participate.

0:21:48.000,0:21:50.620
So we need to keep voices materially attached to people

0:21:50.820,0:21:53.300
in how we build our technology or else

0:21:54.400,0:21:56.080
the risk is tantamount to dismantling...

0:21:58.100,0:22:00.620
Or if we can say the structure of democracy has been

0:22:00.620,0:22:01.720
stable to begin with...

0:22:01.720,0:22:03.160
Also an open question.

0:22:03.160,0:22:05.820
But at stake is not only which voices get to

0:22:05.820,0:22:08.160
speak but who's thought to have a voice to speak with

0:22:08.160,0:22:09.260
in the first place.

0:22:09.260,0:22:12.460
And that's my talk. [Applause from the audience].

0:23:01.960,0:23:05.080
Alright, so thank you for having me here today.

0:23:06.600,0:23:09.800
I am happy to have a chance to talk about this work

0:23:09.800,0:23:12.260
in conjunction with Meryl's work, because we've been

0:23:12.460,0:23:14.940
batting around some of the same ideas

0:23:16.120,0:23:18.920
regarding access, voice, participation

0:23:20.020,0:23:22.180
and technology and disability.

0:23:22.360,0:23:27.780
I've been framing my work as, essentially, cultural studies of technology.

0:23:28.260,0:23:31.300
I'm attempting to understand how technologies

0:23:31.300,0:23:33.700
reflect and reproduce particular dynamics of

0:23:34.900,0:23:37.140
power and how users of technologies

0:23:37.820,0:23:40.540
can push back upon those constructions.

0:23:43.040,0:23:45.760
and challenge these sort of received ways in which

0:23:46.600,0:23:50.440
technologies are developed along certain assumptions.

0:23:50.440,0:23:55.620
I'm going to be reading from my phone because I get lost on a large piece of paper.

0:23:57.340,0:24:01.820
To start off here we have some images reflecting a sort of pervasive

0:24:02.900,0:24:05.780
utopianism in talking about the internet,

0:24:05.780,0:24:07.420
World Wide Web, and related technologies.

0:24:08.720,0:24:12.640
At the top right is an image from MCI's "Anthem Commercial"

0:24:12.640,0:24:15.980
This young person appears speaking in American Sign Language

0:24:15.980,0:24:19.020
right before text that reads "there are no infirmities."

0:24:21.180,0:24:23.900
The TIME 2006 "Person of the Year" was You

0:24:24.040,0:24:25.960
with a big reflective cover.

0:24:25.960,0:24:29.500
And then this bottom photo is a screenshot from a Yahoo!

0:24:29.560,0:24:32.440
advertisement from 2009 called "It's You"

0:24:32.440,0:24:37.080
prioritizing this kind of individual empowerment and excitement around

0:24:37.580,0:24:38.860
new technologies.

0:24:38.860,0:24:42.120
At various points these technologies have been understood as

0:24:42.760,0:24:46.120
democratizing, globalizing, something that can

0:24:46.120,0:24:48.680
eradicate racial, gender and disability difference

0:24:48.680,0:24:52.680
and something that can open economic and social opportunities.

0:24:53.200,0:24:57.040
From the hype of cyberspace to the celebrations of Web 2.0

0:24:57.040,0:25:00.620
we see that stories of technology are often stories of

0:25:00.820,0:25:02.340
endless possibility.

0:25:02.340,0:25:07.540
In "Restricted Access" I am attempting to intervene in some of these celebrations.

0:25:07.540,0:25:10.320
by investigating digital media accessibility

0:25:10.320,0:25:13.580
the processes by which digital media is made useable

0:25:13.580,0:25:15.020
by people with disabilities

0:25:15.380,0:25:18.740
and arguing for the necessity of conceptualizing

0:25:20.700,0:25:22.780
access in a way that will be more

0:25:23.680,0:25:26.560
variable, and open opportunity in new ways.

0:25:27.380,0:25:32.100
So after all, I argue if digital media only open up these opportunities

0:25:32.180,0:25:35.460
to people who are already relatively privileged

0:25:35.460,0:25:38.120
in terms of their ability to access technology

0:25:38.120,0:25:41.160
then their progressive potential remains unrealized.

0:25:42.020,0:25:46.260
If not transformed into a means of upholding those varying inequalities.

0:25:49.040,0:25:52.640
Now what is media accessibility, web accessibility?

0:25:53.060,0:25:56.580
This is something I often illustrate with this slide

0:25:56.580,0:26:00.240
which is just a screen shot of the homepage of The New York Times

0:26:01.260,0:26:04.380
as run through the Web Accessibility and Minds

0:26:04.920,0:26:07.080
Online Accessibility Checker.

0:26:07.080,0:26:10.780
This is an automatic software tool that will check the HTML

0:26:10.820,0:26:12.980
and associated code of a web page

0:26:13.700,0:26:16.340
and flag with little red or yellow icons

0:26:16.340,0:26:18.260
where there might be a problem.

0:26:21.220,0:26:24.100
So in this case the page is being flagged for

0:26:24.100,0:26:26.260
not describing the image that reads "New York Times"

0:26:26.980,0:26:29.380
for not describing the small images

0:26:31.120,0:26:33.920
and for having some incorrect form usage.

0:26:36.160,0:26:39.520
Now, accessibility is a fascinating case because

0:26:42.160,0:26:44.160
it is a very granular process.

0:26:45.240,0:26:48.760
Essentially web content accessibility comes out of

0:26:49.100,0:26:51.420
non-governmental policy sources

0:26:51.420,0:26:53.160
such as the World Wide Web Consortium

0:26:53.820,0:26:57.180
It has also been taken up in various legal contexts

0:26:57.180,0:27:00.820
so there are laws in the United States that require accessibility in some contexts

0:27:00.860,0:27:05.340
and there are arguments that the ADA requires web accessibility in

0:27:06.000,0:27:07.040
many contexts.

0:27:09.000,0:27:12.600
However, these policies are written in such a way that

0:27:13.360,0:27:16.400
to facilitate the use of consumer technology

0:27:16.420,0:27:21.960
with the kinds of adaptive and assistive technologies that Meryl gestured towards.

0:27:22.540,0:27:26.480
Things like screen readers, alternative input devices like

0:27:26.800,0:27:28.640
tongue typers, joysticks,

0:27:28.800,0:27:31.040
these technologies are often key

0:27:31.040,0:27:33.920
in allowing people with disabilities to use technology

0:27:33.920,0:27:38.740
and accessibility ensures that software will work with those technologies.

0:27:39.660,0:27:43.660
However, accessibility, generally, has to be implemented

0:27:43.660,0:27:46.900
by individual companies, developers, website operators

0:27:47.720,0:27:51.080
and is therefore a highly distributed phenomenon.

0:27:53.260,0:27:57.500
There is no automatic way of understanding where this happens.

0:27:57.500,0:28:02.940
Thus a lot of my research has involved tracking digital media accessibility through

0:28:03.400,0:28:08.040
the policy makers, people working with the World Wide Web Consortium

0:28:08.040,0:28:10.900
people working in government, in academic contexts,

0:28:11.460,0:28:14.260
as well as with developers, consultants,

0:28:14.260,0:28:18.240
sometimes marketing departments are in charge of accessibility,

0:28:18.600,0:28:22.840
internal standards, a lot of major corporations have their own

0:28:22.840,0:28:24.500
accessibility standards that

0:28:25.020,0:28:28.220
are different to what we see in the public sphere

0:28:29.300,0:28:34.740
and so in these terms accessibility may be understood in highly bureaucratic and

0:28:34.780,0:28:37.500
technical. It creates a kind of base line

0:28:37.500,0:28:42.040
from which there is a possibility that people with disabilities may then access

0:28:42.040,0:28:43.340
and use digital media.

0:28:44.920,0:28:51.080
In thinking about accessibility, however, it is important to think about the terminology.

0:28:51.560,0:28:54.760
Because "accessibility", like "access", is an

0:28:55.100,0:28:58.220
often-used term that is not always attached to

0:28:58.220,0:29:00.140
these kinds of specialized meanings.

0:29:04.480,0:29:08.880
I often see accessibility invoked to refer to new possibilities.

0:29:08.880,0:29:11.540
The graphical user interface made desktop computing more accessible

0:29:11.540,0:29:13.080
to a large number of people.

0:29:13.080,0:29:17.720
Even as it very much shut down access for people who are visually impaired.

0:29:19.120,0:29:22.480
Right, so we access deployed in various contexts.

0:29:22.480,0:29:26.820
Additionally, access to media and information technologies has been a

0:29:26.820,0:29:29.840
addressed in a wide range of academic literatures.

0:29:29.840,0:29:33.540
From digital divides work to work on public broadcasting,

0:29:33.540,0:29:36.140
community television, media literacy

0:29:36.940,0:29:38.460
and media policy work.

0:29:39.780,0:29:41.380
But in all of these areas

0:29:41.380,0:29:44.800
access is dominantly figured as something which is "had".

0:29:45.120,0:29:46.560
Do you "have" access?

0:29:48.420,0:29:51.140
A sort of unitary and universally desired endpoint.

0:29:51.140,0:29:53.740
Do you have access? It is good to have access.

0:29:53.740,0:29:57.220
And in addition to this sort of positive and linear framing

0:29:57.220,0:30:00.440
the concept of access is often deployed in such a way

0:30:01.880,0:30:04.120
as to stand in for "availability"

0:30:04.120,0:30:09.900
(you have access to the telephone lines as they connect to your house, even if you don't have a telephone),

0:30:09.900,0:30:15.020
"affordability" (this is a subsidized service so therefore in some sort of way therefore

0:30:15.020,0:30:17.440
it is more accessible), or "consumer choice"

0:30:19.060,0:30:21.620
(you have access to 590 cable channels

0:30:21.620,0:30:23.520
whether you want them all or not).

0:30:25.540,0:30:27.620
So "access" is a flexible term.

0:30:27.920,0:30:34.880
But when we center disability and accessibility and their specialized senses, the gaps in some of these

0:30:35.100,0:30:37.100
literatures and usages emerge.

0:30:37.100,0:30:40.580
In fact, it seems that access is inherently variable.

0:30:40.580,0:30:44.340
It's dependant upon bodies, contacts and a host of other factors.

0:30:44.980,0:30:49.380
When we say "check Facebook", we are potentially engaged in a wide

0:30:49.380,0:30:52.700
range of technological and social practices that vary

0:30:52.700,0:30:54.060
from person to person.

0:30:54.060,0:30:58.320
As argued by Canadian disabilities scholar Tanya Titchkosky

0:30:58.320,0:31:03.420
quote, "every single instance of life can be regarded as tied to access. To do anything is

0:31:03.980,0:31:08.300
to have some form of access." Thus, rather than think of access as

0:31:08.300,0:31:11.780
a binary, or linear progression, disability studies

0:31:11.780,0:31:15.260
encourages us to conceive of it as a continually relationally

0:31:15.260,0:31:17.980
produced means of engaging with the world.

0:31:19.120,0:31:22.400
So we don't "have" access, we are "doing" access.

0:31:23.440,0:31:28.960
Now in "Restricted Access" I use this a sort of jumping off point for thinking about

0:31:28.960,0:31:33.880
how then can we study access as an infinitely variable and complicated phenomenon.

0:31:33.880,0:31:37.480
Right? This is starting to sound impossible, if every

0:31:37.480,0:31:39.280
construction of access is different.

0:31:39.520,0:31:43.600
And thus I've been using the metaphor of a kind of "Access Kit"

0:31:43.600,0:31:45.980
illustrated here with a sewing kit with

0:31:45.980,0:31:52.740
a pair of scissors, some safety pins, needles, a thimble, other things you use for sewing... I'm not a sewer.

0:31:54.060,0:32:00.540
However, I use this metaphor because I like the idea of a kit in that you can use it all together to do what it's intended for.

0:32:02.300,0:32:05.420
You can use this to sew.

0:32:05.420,0:32:08.300
Or you can take pieces and parts and use them differently.

0:32:08.300,0:32:11.520
You might cut up something in your kitchen, you might use the safety pin

0:32:13.100,0:32:14.700
to make a punk t-shirt or

0:32:14.880,0:32:18.080
signal your safety in a post Donald Trump world.

0:32:19.800,0:32:22.680
You may recombine these in different ways.

0:32:22.680,0:32:28.260
And thus in sort of figuring access kit, what are some sort of categories of questions?

0:32:28.260,0:32:31.560
What are some sort of ways that we can dig into access

0:32:31.560,0:32:36.820
that will allow us to look through some different lenses at how that access is being created?

0:32:36.820,0:32:43.240
I'm not going to go into detail here, except to say that I sort of loosely grouped these into categories of

0:32:43.940,0:32:47.220
regulation, use, form, content and experience.

0:32:47.380,0:32:49.300
Which I can talk about later.

0:32:49.300,0:32:54.560
And together they encourage us to think about access as a relational phenomenon.

0:32:54.560,0:32:57.820
Drawing attention to what a cultural studies perspective might call

0:32:57.840,0:33:04.320
the articulations of bodies, technologies, institutions, geographies and social identities.

0:33:04.820,0:33:10.100
So access is not one thing, but many. Not an end point, but also not a beginning.

0:33:10.100,0:33:14.800
Nico Carpentier has referred to access as a precondition for participation

0:33:14.800,0:33:16.720
before we can participate we must access

0:33:17.300,0:33:21.940
but through the study of digital media accessibility for disability

0:33:22.800,0:33:29.800
it's become evident to me that the production of access is an on-going part of participation in a digitally mediated society.

0:33:30.960,0:33:35.280
Now one of my favourite examples in the book is the case of Tumblr.

0:33:35.280,0:33:40.380
As some of you probably know, Tumblr is a multimedia microblogging platform

0:33:43.020,0:33:48.380
that is characterized by the sharing or reblogging of posts across the network,

0:33:48.380,0:33:52.060
the formation of interest groups, and a lesser emphasis on individual identity display.

0:33:52.460,0:33:54.300
Than many social networks.

0:33:55.180,0:34:00.220
It is, however, populated by user generated content and thus not obviously

0:34:00.220,0:34:05.500
bound by the legal and technical requirements faced in government, educational or ecommerce spaces.

0:34:06.660,0:34:10.340
Perhaps as a result, Tumblr is formally inaccessible.

0:34:10.659,0:34:16.099
It is difficult to add alternate text to images, even if you wanted to and knew how.

0:34:16.100,0:34:21.320
It features infinite scroll, which can be a challenge for many assistive technologies,

0:34:21.320,0:34:25.320
and it uses very limited mark up features to indicate importance.

0:34:26.360,0:34:30.840
Additionally, the content is highly variable and often animated.

0:34:30.840,0:34:35.400
Adding additional challenges from an accessibility perspective.

0:34:35.400,0:34:41.719
So from a sort of top down perspective, the inaccessibility of Tumblr seems like a problem.

0:34:42.719,0:34:47.518
However, in my work I've tried to couple the institutional perspective

0:34:48.100,0:34:50.980
with a more on the ground user perspective.

0:34:51.280,0:34:54.880
I did roughly 25 interviews with disabled users about

0:34:54.880,0:34:58.500
how they use these technologies and why and what was frustrating.

0:34:59.780,0:35:03.940
In these interviews I've got on the one hand, people telling me

0:35:03.940,0:35:07.180
that they contact Tumblr and talked about the accessibility policies

0:35:07.620,0:35:09.780
and were just totally rebuffed.

0:35:09.780,0:35:13.180
Tumblr was not interested in talking to them, did not change anything.

0:35:16.160,0:35:22.880
However, they also pointed towards group pages such as Accessibility Fail and F Yeah Accessibility

0:35:23.260,0:35:28.380
as other places they were in fact finding community and using this platform.

0:35:30.600,0:35:34.840
In some of these cases users were adopting and adapting Tumblr,

0:35:34.840,0:35:38.020
sharing experiences of micro aggressions, sharing accessibility knowledge,

0:35:38.020,0:35:42.300
teaching each other work arounds by which to make a site more accessible.

0:35:42.820,0:35:46.420
Furthermore, this kind of grassroots accessibility

0:35:46.420,0:35:49.320
revealed some different meanings of access.

0:35:49.320,0:35:51.440
and the values associated with it.

0:35:52.020,0:35:57.460
While accessibility is often through of as a matter of law, policy, or technology

0:35:59.760,0:36:03.680
or the provision of services and a kind of charity model,

0:36:03.680,0:36:08.340
many users were much more likely to talk about it in terms of affective and cultural dimensions.

0:36:08.720,0:36:15.040
Many prioritized feeling welcomed rather than merely accommodated, or being included as

0:36:15.040,0:36:17.700
members of a community rather than as afterthoughts.

0:36:18.980,0:36:21.780
Or having their non-technical needs met.

0:36:21.780,0:36:27.080
For instance, many disable Tumblr users praised the site because its large social justice community

0:36:27.080,0:36:29.940
meant that trigger warnings were commonly used.

0:36:30.780,0:36:36.460
Trigger warnings, or as we saw with Donal Trump, are a brief indication of when and how

0:36:36.460,0:36:40.220
content might be upsetting for someone with a particular kind of trauma

0:36:40.220,0:36:45.480
and they're well beyond the scope of technological accessibility policy. However, as one

0:36:45.480,0:36:49.160
interviewee told me, "Trigger warnings make a site accessible to me."

0:36:49.160,0:36:54.740
Indicating respect for the emotional and social needs that can often accompany disability.

0:36:54.820,0:37:01.540
Building out of such examples, I end "Restricted Access" by talking about cultural accessibility

0:37:01.540,0:37:04.800
as a means of moving towards a more accessible and just future.

0:37:04.800,0:37:08.620
This moves beyond sort of technocentric notions of accessibility or

0:37:08.860,0:37:14.460
accommodation and aims to highlight the interrelationships among technological

0:37:14.460,0:37:20.840
and economic access, cultural representation and production, and access to community in the public sphere.

0:37:21.340,0:37:26.780
Not simply universal design, cultural accessibility prioritizes the on-going

0:37:26.780,0:37:31.740
perspectives and visibility of people with disabilities and it may best be achieved through

0:37:31.740,0:37:37.400
sort of participatory collaborations between users, policy makers, industries and others.

0:37:39.240,0:37:45.560
I've illustrated this concluding point with a screen shot of actress Teal Shearer, who created a web

0:37:45.560,0:37:50.000
series called "My Gimpy Life" which she funded through Kickstarter.

0:37:50.120,0:37:56.680
So already we're seeing a sort of host of contemporary digital media technologies brought to bear

0:37:58.380,0:38:04.700
and in this case Shearer also prioritized disability, community and access both on screen and off.

0:38:04.700,0:38:09.880
The web series had an onscreen credit to the person who produced the close captioning

0:38:09.880,0:38:14.000
The Kickstarter page developed over time into more of a community space

0:38:14.020,0:38:15.700
than a fundraising space

0:38:19.400,0:38:24.600
and we see a range of relationships and connections forming that potentially

0:38:24.600,0:38:30.280
enable the formation of community and the movement into a larger civic and public sphere.

0:38:31.240,0:38:33.480
from inclusive cultural spaces.

0:38:33.480,0:38:39.280
Ultimately then, I would argue that access is not simply a prerequisite to participation,

0:38:39.280,0:38:42.289
access and participation depend upon one another.

0:38:42.289,0:38:44.500
Just as access enables participation

0:38:46.020,0:38:51.940
so does increased participation by diverse people make possible the expansion of access.

0:38:54.740,0:38:56.820
And I will wrap it up there so that we have some time. [Audience applause].

0:39:11.000,0:39:16.200
Okay I'm going to start with one question for the three of you and then we can open

0:39:16.200,0:39:18.120
it up as quickly as possible to Q&A.

0:39:18.120,0:39:22.680
So it strikes me that constantly all of our work is constantly playing

0:39:22.920,0:39:28.120
catch up with lived experience and Ryan I'm thinking of your work with Herdict

0:39:28.120,0:39:31.240
is in some way, is always trying to close that gap

0:39:33.140,0:39:37.860
between lived experiences of blockages or clogs or censorship online

0:39:37.980,0:39:41.820
and the point at which there is greater public awareness

0:39:41.880,0:39:43.240
about those blockages.

0:39:45.600,0:39:50.240
And scholarship by design is sort of laggy because of the time it takes

0:39:50.240,0:39:53.980
to dwell on things and the time it takes to publish things

0:39:55.000,0:39:57.080
so I wonder how each of you think

0:39:58.900,0:40:02.340
about lagginess with regard to lived experience in

0:40:03.760,0:40:05.280
each of your projects.

0:40:05.280,0:40:07.000
Maybe we can start with Ryan.

0:40:10.380,0:40:13.580
So I'll just first preface my response by saying

0:40:17.180,0:40:20.380
as Dylan mentioned in my introduction I spend my

0:40:25.800,0:40:28.920
work days thinking about access to technology

0:40:31.100,0:40:34.380
and who controls these sort of elements of the web

0:40:35.960,0:40:38.520
and the internet and our technologies

0:40:40.600,0:40:45.160
but in my personal life as someone who wears hearing aids I think a lot

0:40:46.260,0:40:49.380
sort of in the very specific use case of how that

0:40:51.020,0:40:54.140
technology enables and limits me personally

0:40:55.080,0:40:56.360
in different ways.

0:40:59.940,0:41:01.060
And so I found the

0:41:01.720,0:41:05.160
discussion from Liz and Meryl really interesting

0:41:06.260,0:41:07.300
and important.

0:41:08.100,0:41:11.620
So on this question of lagginess, you know, one of the

0:41:13.180,0:41:15.260
things that really jumps out at

0:41:15.880,0:41:18.520
me and I think picks up on something that

0:41:19.220,0:41:21.300
Meryl was saying, was that this

0:41:21.940,0:41:23.460
question of, you know,

0:41:25.300,0:41:26.980
technology reproducing

0:41:29.260,0:41:31.020
structural inequalities

0:41:33.860,0:41:37.140
and something that I think is on that point is

0:41:38.200,0:41:39.880
interesting to me is that

0:41:41.360,0:41:42.160
I see a lot of

0:41:45.800,0:41:48.360
convergence going on in technologies

0:41:49.360,0:41:51.600
that, as Meryl's example showed,

0:41:51.780,0:41:54.100
that people can use iPads which are

0:41:54.100,0:41:56.780
consumer technologies to do things that

0:41:57.520,0:41:59.440
earlier might have required

0:42:00.920,0:42:03.480
going through a medical specialist or

0:42:07.680,0:42:10.800
getting very expensive medical technologies

0:42:10.800,0:42:13.280
and in the hearing aid market there is a lot of

0:42:15.140,0:42:17.300
movement now to allow companies

0:42:17.300,0:42:19.000
to sell things that aren't quite hearing aids

0:42:19.000,0:42:21.360
but do essentially everything that

0:42:22.100,0:42:23.540
a hearing aid could do

0:42:26.580,0:42:28.740
and there is a lot of pros and cons

0:42:28.740,0:42:31.980
to that approach, you know, there's the potential

0:42:31.980,0:42:35.620
that it could lower the cost that a lot of people that don't get hearing aids

0:42:36.120,0:42:38.280
could suddenly get hearing aids

0:42:39.360,0:42:42.160
but no longer are they having it fine tuned

0:42:42.160,0:42:43.360
by a medical professional

0:42:47.280,0:42:49.760
and all of that, and so as you converge

0:42:52.220,0:42:54.540
sort of mainstream technology and

0:42:54.540,0:42:56.060
technology that helps people with disabilities

0:42:58.100,0:42:59.700
in some ways I think that

0:43:00.020,0:43:02.340
you can turn Meryl's question into

0:43:02.860,0:43:03.980
or prompt around

0:43:06.060,0:43:06.560
and say

0:43:07.520,0:43:12.080
in what ways is all technology reinforcing societal and structural

0:43:15.020,0:43:18.300
inequalities and, you know, to Sarah Hendren has

0:43:18.300,0:43:20.340
talked about how all technology is

0:43:20.340,0:43:23.840
assistive technology. You know, we're not naturally born with

0:43:24.200,0:43:27.240
the ability to get our emails on our wrists and

0:43:27.240,0:43:30.420
you know, and yet, technology enables us to do that.

0:43:33.680,0:43:37.760
So in what ways is technology that all of us are using in assistive ways

0:43:39.900,0:43:44.300
reproducing things that maybe we should be taking a closer look at?

0:43:46.740,0:43:48.900
One example that comes to mind is

0:43:52.280,0:43:53.960
how autonomous vehicles

0:43:53.960,0:43:57.540
are certainly something, you know, to talk about access,

0:43:58.540,0:44:00.780
can potentially allow people who

0:44:00.780,0:44:03.840
either physically can't drive or they're too old to drive

0:44:05.800,0:44:07.720
allows them to have mobility

0:44:09.420,0:44:11.100
as ride sharing services

0:44:12.080,0:44:17.200
will start using it there is the potential to open up access for lots of people

0:44:17.200,0:44:20.040
and yet ride sharing and autonomous vehicles often

0:44:20.040,0:44:21.280
rely very heavily on

0:44:22.420,0:44:26.100
mapping and so parts of the world are simply not mapped.

0:44:26.100,0:44:28.260
And those places don't get access.

0:44:28.720,0:44:30.960
And so there is an example of where

0:44:31.860,0:44:35.220
technology, taken out of the disability context,

0:44:36.020,0:44:38.900
but something that you could characterize

0:44:39.640,0:44:41.000
at a very basic level

0:44:41.000,0:44:42.800
as accessibility technology

0:44:45.660,0:44:50.460
is itself going to potentially reproduce the structural inequalities

0:44:50.460,0:44:52.520
that places like the favelas in Brazil

0:44:53.320,0:44:56.360
are very heavily populated but are not mapped

0:44:56.360,0:44:57.840
will not have access to these technologies.

0:44:58.480,0:45:02.640
I'm not quite sure that answers your question about lagginess

0:45:05.260,0:45:10.220
But there are just some bigger questions to me about technology in general

0:45:10.480,0:45:13.680
and how that's reproducing these inequalities

0:45:15.280,0:45:18.160
and I think it does raise these questions of

0:45:18.160,0:45:20.120
you know, from a lagginess perspective

0:45:23.160,0:45:26.040
that we have to sort of think of these things

0:45:26.040,0:45:26.960
in their broader context and not

0:45:27.400,0:45:29.400
just in a disability context.

0:45:30.980,0:45:37.300
I'll just say something very briefly because then I want to make sure we have time for questions

0:45:38.260,0:45:40.020
but just talking about lag

0:45:40.060,0:45:43.580
and delay and whether that's a negative or a positive thing

0:45:44.840,0:45:46.700
or an inevitable thing

0:45:47.140,0:45:48.600
but I immediately thought of when you brought up

0:45:48.600,0:45:52.900
you know the relational, or the sort of act of access, it is a process

0:45:52.900,0:45:53.960
and not just a product.

0:45:53.960,0:45:56.660
Thinking about with speech generating devices

0:45:56.660,0:45:59.220
that it can take a while to create a message

0:45:59.220,0:46:01.460
for it to then be output for somebody to say.

0:46:03.160,0:46:06.920
The fluidity with which one might be able to potentially

0:46:08.500,0:46:10.580
depending on what kind of motor

0:46:10.580,0:46:12.440
impairment they might or might not have

0:46:12.440,0:46:16.240
the patience that is required for a conversation partner

0:46:16.240,0:46:19.920
even if you've got a technology that works well, it's top of the line, it's fully charged,

0:46:19.920,0:46:21.180
that's a whole other thing

0:46:22.200,0:46:25.320
can't talk if the thing doesn't have any juice.

0:46:25.320,0:46:30.060
that the patience that is required of somebody else to follow a pace of conversation

0:46:30.700,0:46:35.500
that might not be that one that they themselves enact or are use to having with another person.

0:46:38.760,0:46:44.300
So that process, that patience, and that is something that is learned and something that

0:46:44.480,0:46:46.460
somebody who doesn't have a speech disability would have to be able to become

0:46:46.620,0:46:47.860
better at equiped at

0:46:47.860,0:46:50.960
So think about the kinds of personal, social and cultural

0:46:51.180,0:46:54.140
equipment that is needed for participation

0:46:54.140,0:46:55.920
and that gets sort of like added to the

0:46:55.920,0:46:59.520
list here just thinking about temporality in that way.

0:47:24.760,0:47:26.520
It's just a small comment.

0:47:27.820,0:47:30.060
I'm from Columbia.

0:47:30.060,0:47:36.360
We don't have that many resources so we have to come up with creative solutions.

0:47:36.360,0:47:40.840
The main problem with these kinds of issues is the economies of scale.

0:47:40.840,0:47:45.260
As the population is not big, the market is not providing solutions for them.

0:47:45.980,0:47:48.620
So for example in the case of deaf people...

0:47:50.560,0:47:52.480
we create this relay center

0:47:52.480,0:47:53.660
with sign language.

0:47:56.820,0:47:59.780
So a person who is deaf could connect to an app

0:48:03.060,0:48:06.820
and this remote person can translate from sign language

0:48:07.120,0:48:09.760
so the deaf person can present an exam or

0:48:09.760,0:48:13.740
have a consultation with a doctor or rely any kind of communication

0:48:13.740,0:48:16.940
so this is one example of a solution to economies of scale.

0:48:17.440,0:48:21.200
The other is we buy a country license for a screen reader.

0:48:25.500,0:48:28.380
So one license is, I think, $1000 per person

0:48:29.060,0:48:29.620
per year

0:48:29.620,0:48:34.380
but if you buy a country license where it's less than $1 per person, per year

0:48:35.860,0:48:37.540
or per computer, per year

0:48:40.820,0:48:44.180
We buy thousands of thousands of licenses so we can

0:48:44.180,0:48:46.480
install a license in every internet cafe

0:48:46.480,0:48:47.780
in every school, for example.

0:48:49.660,0:48:52.540
People are not paying because it's so cheap

0:48:56.080,0:48:59.680
to charge for, so for example, the school pays a little

0:48:59.680,0:49:02.160
and we gather all this money and buy a country license,

0:49:02.160,0:49:05.940
which is tremendously cheaper than paying individually.

0:49:13.000,0:49:17.960
I hadn't heard about country licenses. That's really fascinating, I want to know more.

0:49:20.320,0:49:22.960
But in terms of scale, we may think about

0:49:22.960,0:49:26.440
the sort of things that Ryan brought up with mainstreaming as being one

0:49:26.440,0:49:30.460
way in which mainstream technologies are taking on assistive functions

0:49:30.800,0:49:33.600
which enables a different kind of scaling

0:49:33.600,0:49:36.380
When we are talking about assistive technologies

0:49:37.320,0:49:39.080
that are developed as such

0:49:39.080,0:49:43.780
they're often very expensive because there's a small market and a lot of research that goes into them.

0:49:46.520,0:49:49.640
When those can be deployed in consumer devices

0:49:49.780,0:49:52.420
some of those costs go down but as I think

0:49:52.580,0:49:56.260
Ryan indicated sometimes oversight goes down as well.

0:49:56.260,0:49:59.080
You don't have a medical professional adjusting the hearing aids

0:49:59.580,0:50:02.940
I've been doing some research on emergency lately

0:50:02.940,0:50:06.860
and you don't really have very good connections to 911 when

0:50:06.860,0:50:08.580
you're relying on an app to dial it for you.

0:50:09.620,0:50:12.500
So there are ways in which that is changing.

0:50:17.000,0:50:20.440
I just had a question about the differences between

0:50:20.980,0:50:22.740
adults and kids

0:50:24.180,0:50:26.000
and particularly I think that there is often

0:50:26.040,0:50:30.440
you know, talking about voice and voiceless, you know, many times

0:50:33.780,0:50:35.060
kids are voiceless

0:50:36.040,0:50:37.880
either simply because they

0:50:37.880,0:50:40.000
aren't at the emotional or intellectual

0:50:41.100,0:50:44.220
place where they can talk about what is going on

0:50:44.220,0:50:46.860
or legally their parents speak for them

0:50:48.460,0:50:51.660
and I know from my personal experience when I was

0:50:52.880,0:50:57.120
5 or 6 the last thing I wanted to be doing was wearing hearing aids

0:50:58.780,0:51:01.900
and I didn't want people to ask me about them and

0:51:01.900,0:51:04.700
if it was my choice I would have just taken them out

0:51:04.700,0:51:06.380
but luckily it wasn't my choice

0:51:06.540,0:51:09.500
And so I was wondering if you could talk about

0:51:09.500,0:51:12.440
some of the differences that you guys have seen

0:51:14.020,0:51:17.300
in particular, you quoted some parents talking,

0:51:17.740,0:51:19.320
about their experiences

0:51:20.700,0:51:25.420
I'd be interested to hear about how these issues of voice and voiceless

0:51:25.860,0:51:29.700
and access are different or different challenges emerge

0:51:29.700,0:51:32.440
when you're dealing with adults versus kids

0:51:37.560,0:51:39.880
I've worked primarily with adults

0:51:39.880,0:51:43.040
and in part that's because when we are looking at

0:51:44.260,0:51:48.180
disability spaces there is a lot of attention often to K-12

0:51:49.820,0:51:54.060
education and to particularly what can be done to help children

0:51:54.640,0:51:59.040
and there is often a drop off of when those children become adults.

0:51:59.180,0:52:03.340
So by looking at online spaces where people with disabilities

0:52:03.900,0:52:08.700
were engaging with one another and creating disability culture I think

0:52:09.340,0:52:13.900
I get an interesting sort of perspective on what happens after that.

0:52:13.900,0:52:18.580
Right in that sort of less structured space but obviously for research on kids

0:52:18.580,0:52:24.280
I think the kid focus is particularly just from my expertise and background more than anything

0:52:25.100,0:52:27.660
Even then, thirteen tends to become my cutoff.

0:52:27.660,0:52:30.660
Fourteen in the US, you're meant to at least federally, have a mandate

0:52:30.840,0:52:33.360
mandate to talk about transition to adulthood

0:52:33.560,0:52:36.520
and that's where I sort of stop, even though

0:52:36.760,0:52:39.400
you can be like 30 and really be into Elmo

0:52:39.400,0:52:43.260
and in my first book I talk in "Digital Youth with Disabilities" talk about

0:52:43.900,0:52:48.460
age appropriateness and the fluidity with which radical spaces can

0:52:48.460,0:52:52.360
potentially be created outside of related to interested or related to

0:52:52.360,0:52:56.240
different cultural spaces like theater performances that

0:52:57.880,0:53:04.120
have sensory inclusivity, sort of mixed aged, mixed abilities of all different sort of kinds

0:53:04.120,0:53:07.060
and I think that with the book a lot of the research

0:53:08.880,0:53:10.160
in terms of the kids

0:53:11.160,0:53:13.640
there are the parents that are quoted

0:53:14.380,0:53:17.980
In the book there are a lot of descriptors of behaviour

0:53:17.980,0:53:20.900
and of interactions with kids and other individuals

0:53:23.100,0:53:26.220
I did not have the skill to interview some of the

0:53:29.540,0:53:32.020
kids in terms of their capacity to use

0:53:32.020,0:53:35.480
...the whole point was that they didn't have reliable access to communication

0:53:37.240,0:53:43.160
and so the challenges of then doing that work outside of triangulating different sort of

0:53:43.600,0:53:48.960
behaviours and different kinds of expressions, vocalizations or excitements

0:53:49.620,0:53:53.220
in kinds of spaces. I would say for my next book project

0:53:53.220,0:53:56.060
which is focused on the experiences of autistic youth

0:53:56.200,0:53:58.120
growing up in the digital age

0:53:58.820,0:54:01.880
and different kinds of ways that communication happens

0:54:02.560,0:54:06.000
I'm grappling with that right now in terms of in interviews that I'm doing

0:54:07.620,0:54:12.820
directly with kids, the ways that I talk with them about their media practices

0:54:12.820,0:54:14.520
Again, some of that is oral and some of that is not

0:54:14.520,0:54:16.540
and so part of that is sometimes the challenge of

0:54:16.540,0:54:18.540
presenting fieldwork to an audience

0:54:19.120,0:54:20.880
and the legibility of that

0:54:21.220,0:54:23.380
as opposed to sort of just having

0:54:24.000,0:54:26.400
a video or another kind of recording

0:54:26.400,0:54:28.600
so that kind of gets at our methods and

0:54:30.700,0:54:31.980
the ways in which we

0:54:32.260,0:54:34.020
make our research visible

0:54:34.020,0:54:36.340
and the ways in which certain kinds of visibilities

0:54:38.760,0:54:40.920
can unintentionally privilege

0:54:40.920,0:54:42.980
or reflect certain ways in which the research was or was not conducted.

0:54:48.980,0:54:52.900
Hi, I have one comment about giving voice to the voiceless.

0:54:52.900,0:54:55.160
I really liked the point about how voiceless

0:54:55.860,0:55:00.280
is seen as a means for agency and self presentation.

0:55:00.280,0:55:02.180
I was just thinking about if you change the headline to something different

0:55:02.220,0:55:04.940
instead of giving voice to the voiceless

0:55:06.100,0:55:09.300
to something like "Listen to the Unlistenable"

0:55:11.220,0:55:13.700
it'll be a totally different focus on

0:55:14.960,0:55:18.400
instead of on the person who needs to be given a voice

0:55:18.960,0:55:22.080
it will be on behalf of us to train our listening capacity.

0:55:22.380,0:55:25.740
So I don't know whether you've thought about that.

0:55:25.740,0:55:27.520
Yeah, so listening and speaking

0:55:27.520,0:55:31.160
and the dynamics between those things are something that I talk about more in the book

0:55:34.020,0:55:38.660
and that gets a little bit to... There's a phrase I really, really love...

0:55:38.660,0:55:40.060
A media justice scholar Tanya Draya talks about. The partial promise of voice

0:55:40.080,0:55:43.280
So voice's incompletion, the partiality of it,

0:55:44.220,0:55:48.700
to fully say that we have any kind of grasp or pin-downableness of it

0:55:49.580,0:55:52.220
because that understanding of respect

0:55:53.560,0:55:56.920
of a message being acted on and a promise being kept

0:55:56.940,0:55:59.340
and that's partly in larger public sphere discussions

0:56:01.280,0:56:03.840
but I think that point about listening

0:56:03.840,0:56:05.280
whether one is able to be listened to or not...

0:56:05.900,0:56:09.820
again that's a... Begin to think about that in a biological

0:56:10.140,0:56:16.780
individual level, a social level, a political... You know... what the mechanisms are for feedback

0:56:16.780,0:56:21.080
But also some of that can sort of reinforce who's in power in the first place.

0:56:23.760,0:56:27.040
And in what ways can that still enforce an us/them

0:56:29.700,0:56:34.420
An essentializing idea of having and not having of giving and not having.

0:56:38.980,0:56:41.380
Hi, I have a comment then a question.

0:56:41.380,0:56:43.680
I had the great pleasure and I will say some humility,

0:56:43.680,0:56:45.060
about ten years ago

0:56:45.160,0:56:47.960
I was teaching at Northeastern for adults

0:56:47.960,0:56:50.620
and one of my students was a 74 year old blind man

0:56:50.680,0:56:52.200
who lost his sight at 32

0:56:52.660,0:56:54.900
and I learned the day in the life of

0:56:55.740,0:56:59.340
someone who is disable and I had to rearrange my entire

0:57:01.580,0:57:03.900
how I was going to structure an exam

0:57:03.900,0:57:06.380
because we were in a computer class room and he had to go in a special room

0:57:06.540,0:57:10.220
and if they didn't have the jaws then I would have to work

0:57:10.220,0:57:14.480
with the Northeastern disability office to have someone come and have a reader

0:57:14.660,0:57:18.900
read the exam to him and I learned something at the MA disability

0:57:20.320,0:57:26.000
I just say, "oh just go to the bookstore and go and get volume 6 of the book for the class"

0:57:28.000,0:57:31.120
and the one they had for the brail was version 3.

0:57:31.260,0:57:33.660
Things that we just take for granted.

0:57:33.660,0:57:35.140
It's just very humbling

0:57:35.140,0:57:37.420
Another time I was at an event where

0:57:39.180,0:57:41.500
there was a company who had an event

0:57:41.500,0:57:44.440
at the faculty club where they were talking and saying that many

0:57:44.440,0:57:46.400
times when they have events here

0:57:46.400,0:57:48.680
or classes they have closed captioning

0:57:48.900,0:57:52.100
and they said that many times foreign students,

0:57:52.400,0:57:55.120
to help them learn English, are using it.

0:57:55.120,0:57:58.620
So that's like the number one reason in addition to disability.

0:57:59.460,0:58:01.140
So my question here is...

0:58:01.140,0:58:02.460
We're in an area where we have so many start-ups

0:58:02.460,0:58:06.460
and just like until recently, cyber security and writing secure code is

0:58:08.300,0:58:13.900
an after thought... disability for many places is like, "yeah, yeah, whatever..."

0:58:15.800,0:58:19.640
Is there anything that can be done to teach the CS students

0:58:21.420,0:58:25.980
that are coming to our courses, at MIT, here at Harvard, the people who

0:58:25.980,0:58:28.280
before they start their careers, to incorporate it into

0:58:31.420,0:58:35.100
design so it's not... So let's take it and make it part of

0:58:35.540,0:58:37.300
how you learn how to create

0:58:37.300,0:58:39.940
So you will not have these credible disparities

0:58:41.740,0:58:43.020
in accessibility.

0:58:43.960,0:58:45.640
One thing I would say is to

0:58:46.980,0:58:50.980
read histories of people with disabilities as actors in the

0:58:50.980,0:58:52.420
history of the development of computing.

0:58:53.100,0:58:56.460
So the idea that it is more like you're not adding on

0:58:56.460,0:59:02.140
disability... Like, the recovery of people with disabilities in computing history or engineering history

0:59:04.080,0:59:07.280
is really central to that idea of not developing

0:59:07.280,0:59:08.560
a sort of charity model

0:59:09.040,0:59:11.840
of disability pedagogy in a field like CS.

0:59:14.560,0:59:16.000
I'll just add to that.

0:59:16.000,0:59:17.960
I've done some work on how web accessibility

0:59:18.060,0:59:22.140
was explicitly an afterthought in teaching web development

0:59:22.140,0:59:22.980
for many, many years.

0:59:22.980,0:59:25.860
In the sense that it would be the last chapter of the book

0:59:25.860,0:59:29.240
Once you've learnt to do everything else, maybe you'll look at this

0:59:29.420,0:59:30.940
but you probably won't

0:59:30.940,0:59:35.480
And that's something that's borne out of a lot of computer studies curriculum.

0:59:36.020,0:59:38.580
They don't have courses on accessibility

0:59:38.580,0:59:43.460
and basic lessons don't incorporate it as something that you do as part of a process.

0:59:43.760,0:59:48.400
The International Association of Accessibility Professionals is a

0:59:48.400,0:59:51.200
young organization maybe four or five years old

0:59:52.260,0:59:56.820
that's explicitly attempting to address that by making some sort of

0:59:58.100,1:00:00.500
best practices for CS education and

1:00:00.500,1:00:02.700
offering some certifications for people who have

1:00:03.000,1:00:08.120
actual training in accessibility to use once they go out into the job market.

1:00:10.640,1:00:14.400
Then of course there is a whole world of universal design

1:00:14.400,1:00:16.120
and design for disability and design literatures

1:00:17.580,1:00:18.700
focused on how to

1:00:19.620,1:00:22.660
incorporate diverse users at an early stage.

1:00:25.540,1:00:28.980
I was just going to say that I am somewhat optimistic

1:00:30.120,1:00:31.640
in this sense right now

1:00:32.460,1:00:34.860
because I think that when you look at

1:00:35.760,1:00:38.400
things like wearable technologies and

1:00:39.400,1:00:40.760
there's so much more

1:00:40.860,1:00:43.100
focus right now on the mainstream

1:00:43.100,1:00:45.760
and I think this gets back to this kind of convergence point

1:00:45.760,1:00:47.940
there is so much more focus right now on

1:00:47.940,1:00:50.660
human-machine interaction and artificial intelligence

1:00:50.660,1:00:52.220
and a lot of the technologies

1:00:52.260,1:00:54.020
that are necessary to make

1:00:56.140,1:00:57.340
wearables better

1:00:58.100,1:01:02.820
to make augmented reality better, to make autonomous vehicles better

1:01:03.820,1:01:06.300
the improvements that have been made

1:01:07.920,1:01:11.840
over the last several years in computer vision technology

1:01:13.800,1:01:17.560
all of those things will help on this lagginess question

1:01:18.420,1:01:23.780
I think it's that as more technology and these start-ups are thinking more about

1:01:23.780,1:01:26.360
how machines interact with the physical world

1:01:26.360,1:01:28.800
they're solving some of these problems

1:01:28.880,1:01:31.280
that maybe have traditionally been

1:01:31.440,1:01:33.920
have been the after thought problems

1:01:34.900,1:01:38.100
and they're not approaching it in the mindset of

1:01:38.100,1:01:40.120
how do we solve problems with people with disabilities

1:01:41.140,1:01:43.380
but I think that the applications

1:01:43.380,1:01:45.160
are getting closer and closer

1:01:45.540,1:01:48.180
so that it's not such a leap to figure out

1:01:48.180,1:01:50.180
oh, we designed this thing, now we have to

1:01:50.180,1:01:53.280
figure out how to apply it in a whole new context

1:01:53.680,1:01:56.960
but it's actually like, oh, we now have something

1:01:57.140,1:02:00.180
that can identify what's going on in this room

1:02:00.180,1:02:03.020
because we need it for our artificial intelligence technology

1:02:03.020,1:02:05.760
and that makes it super easy to design something for someone

1:02:05.760,1:02:07.960
with a visual impairment. So, I'm optimistic.

1:02:10.280,1:02:13.560
So just a quick comment on that last bit, there is an

1:02:13.560,1:02:16.940
industrial thing called Teach Access

1:02:18.120,1:02:21.400
it's a consortium of a number of the big companies

1:02:22.580,1:02:25.220
are trying to put together curricula to

1:02:25.220,1:02:26.980
distribute throughout a bunch of universities for specifically integrating

1:02:27.240,1:02:28.920
it into the CS curriculum.

1:02:28.920,1:02:31.620
There's a lot of trouble there because a lot of the

1:02:31.620,1:02:34.060
industries are trying to hire people and

1:02:34.060,1:02:35.620
nobody knows anything about it

1:02:35.620,1:02:38.000
and so this is actually a pull from industry to try and

1:02:38.620,1:02:40.860
be able to key that up a little bit.

1:02:42.540,1:02:44.460
So it's something to look at.

1:02:44.460,1:02:45.380
I just had a question. A lot of the

1:02:45.640,1:02:48.520
regulatory issues and the policy issues in

1:02:48.520,1:02:50.520
accessibility have to do with

1:02:51.020,1:02:55.580
things around either livelihoods or access to government services

1:02:55.580,1:02:59.680
these things that are really very instrumental in getting things done in your life.

1:03:00.100,1:03:02.980
I'm wonder if you could speak a little bit to

1:03:03.240,1:03:07.800
issues around entertainment or just sociality of just interacting

1:03:07.800,1:03:13.280
because as much more of our lives become mediated the access of these things become much more critical

1:03:13.880,1:03:14.840
to just our lives.

1:03:16.220,1:03:19.900
And I don't see a lot of discussion about that in a lot of disability discussions.

1:03:22.200,1:03:26.680
I think the place you see the most discussion of that sort of thing is

1:03:27.800,1:03:28.840
in captioning.

1:03:28.840,1:03:33.360
Particularly, in the past several years as Netflix captioned its content

1:03:34.140,1:03:36.940
both the activism around that and then the

1:03:39.860,1:03:42.660
21st Century Video and Communication Act

1:03:42.860,1:03:46.700
took some steps towards prioritizing that kind of access

1:03:46.700,1:03:49.800
But I think it's a really intesting question to think

1:03:49.800,1:03:52.120
about content and what we're gaining access to

1:03:54.600,1:03:59.160
and making sure that access to video games and access to pornography

1:03:59.220,1:04:04.420
are still kinds of access, and people with disabilities are not less entitled

1:04:05.480,1:04:09.800
to things that we think are morally dubious than are other people.

1:04:09.800,1:04:14.700
So there's certainly some tension there, right? Because government doesn't want to get into

1:04:16.420,1:04:19.940
that if they can avoid it. But I'm encouraged because

1:04:20.220,1:04:23.580
I see that that's also happening in informal ways.

1:04:26.260,1:04:29.060
Major league baseball did what's called a

1:04:29.060,1:04:30.840
structured negotiation where instead of a lawsuit

1:04:30.840,1:04:33.760
they worked with disabled community memebers

1:04:34.480,1:04:38.800
to make websites and streaming baseball games more accessible.

1:04:41.840,1:04:47.280
So that's something where the mandate for MLB to be accessible is not really there

1:04:48.160,1:04:51.440
but through some processes of introductions and collaboration

1:04:52.900,1:04:56.740
you can actually get to places where that content is being

1:05:00.460,1:05:03.420
addressed but it's very much not from the W3C.

1:05:04.840,1:05:07.640
There's a chapter in the book that's about

1:05:07.960,1:05:11.880
centering on... The question is like 'what is an iPad for?'

1:05:14.660,1:05:19.300
There were these real tensions around whether an iPad was for that app exclusively

1:05:20.000,1:05:23.200
or whether it was also for all of the other things

1:05:23.200,1:05:25.640
that any of the other things that a person might use it for

1:05:26.240,1:05:28.800
and a lot of things that were related to

1:05:30.040,1:05:33.560
issues around taste, related to issues of ownership,

1:05:34.360,1:05:39.160
the idea of whether you had multiple different pieces of those hardware

1:05:39.160,1:05:42.940
to delineate and make distinctions between what each of those things are for

1:05:42.940,1:05:46.860
but for me the real lightening strike in that was I was doing an observation

1:05:47.600,1:05:53.120
and the speech pathologist I was with had very negative things to say about YouTube

1:05:53.120,1:05:56.500
even though it was clearly something that the kid enjoyed

1:05:58.260,1:06:02.660
that motivated them to use this app in the first place to communicate

1:06:03.380,1:06:09.300
but there were lots of values about kids and their iPads and their YouTubes and are shut down

1:06:09.300,1:06:12.080
and the ways that that particularly extra marginalized

1:06:12.240,1:06:17.520
families who maybe didn't have access to, or the ability to mobilize resources

1:06:17.520,1:06:19.700
I want to also phrase it as that way

1:06:19.960,1:06:24.920
around English language, mobilize resources around community members

1:06:24.920,1:06:27.260
who had other kinds of access to other kinds of resources

1:06:27.260,1:06:31.640
social capital, the cultural capital to push bak against that person

1:06:32.700,1:06:33.340
in any way

1:06:35.080,1:06:41.800
Especially because an iPad is designed to be a consumption technology not necessarily for creation

1:06:41.920,1:06:43.920
and somewhat for circulation

1:06:43.920,1:06:47.320
just thinking about the people wanting to take advantage of

1:06:47.320,1:06:50.920
all of these things that can be done but some of the professional

1:06:52.980,1:06:57.380
push backs around expertise and it's a mainstream technology but

1:06:57.380,1:07:02.080
it entered the home through the teachings of somebody with a professionalization

1:07:02.700,1:07:05.660
and certain sort of things attached to that.

1:07:05.760,1:07:07.360
More of that in the book.

1:07:08.040,1:07:15.040
Okay thanks every, again there are books. I'll just say there are books for purchase at the back of the room

1:07:15.820,1:07:20.460
and thank you so much for coming out. Liz and Meryl and Ryan will be here.

1:07:20.460,1:07:22.780
A round of applause for our guests. [Audience applauses].