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Hi, Everyone. Thank you for being here.

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It's my great pleasure and privilege to introduce today's speakers.

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Liz Ellcessor has been, since 2012,

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an Assistant Professor in the Media School at Indiana University, Bloomington,

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as well as an affiliate faculty member

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in the department of

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of Gender and Women's Studies in the

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Cultural Studies program.

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However

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She will be starting a position in the Department of Media Studies

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at the University of Virginia

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very, very shortly.

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Liz works at the intersection of

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Cultural Studies, Media Studies

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and Disability Studies.

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Her research and teaching interests include

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Media history, access and literacy as well as

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social media, participatory culture,

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celebrity and performance of the self.

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She is the author of "Restricted Access: media, disability and the politics of participation"

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from NYU press, last year,

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and co-editor with Bill Kirkpatrick

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of "Disability Media Studies",

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which is forthcoming from NYU.

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Meryl Alper is

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an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at

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Northeastern University and a faculty associate here at

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The Berkman Klein Center.

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Prior to joining the faculty at Northeastern

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she earned her Doctorate and Master's degrees

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from the Annenburg School of Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California.

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Meryl has worked for over a decade in the Children's media industry.

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As an undergraduate at Northwestern she

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she was the lab assistant manager in the NSF-funded

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Children's Digital Media Center/

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Digital Kids Lab.

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She interned with the education and research

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department at Sesame Workshop

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in New York.

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Maybe you've heard of it. [Laughter from audience].

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Post graduation, she worked in

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LA as a research manager for Nick Jr.

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conducting formative research for

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the Emmy-nominated educational

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pre-school television series

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Ni Hao, Ki Ian

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and the Fresh Beat Band.

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Meryl is the author of "Digital Youth with Disabilities",

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MIT Press, 2014,

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and "Giving Voice:

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mobile communication, disability and inequality",

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MIT Press, this year.

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You may have also seen her writing in The Guardian, The Atlantic

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Motherboard and Wired.

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Ryan Boudish is a Senior Researcher

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at the Berkman Klein Center.

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Ryan joined the Berkman Klein Center in 2011

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as a Fellow and the Project Director of

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Herdict.

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In his time here Ryan has contributed policy and legal analysis

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to a number of projects and

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reports and he's led

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several significant initiatives related to

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internet censorship, corporate transparency about

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government surveillance and multi

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stakeholder governance mechanism

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I should also say that Meryl and Liz have each

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published outstanding books in the past year.

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They're in the center of my field, at least, and

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while "Giving Voice" by Meryl and

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"Restricted Access" by Liz

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offer rigorous analyses of lives lived with disabilities

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in the 21st century

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they're also offering very fundamental reconsiderations

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of what it means to study

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media and communication and technology

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and both books are totally worth your time

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and it's a great privilege to have

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you all here today.

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So, I'm going to hand it over to

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Meryl and we'll start today's event.

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Awesome.

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So Liz and I, we're playing off one another a little bit in

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the sense that each of our books

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focuses particularly on a

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key term. Mine, "voice" and

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Liz's, "Access", and

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As you might have read in the introduction to

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this event on the event site

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"Can we talk?", we think, is a really evocative question.

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We'll pull in threads from each of our discussions

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It pulls upon ability, collective

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notions and actions of what it means to participate

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So my presentation is Can We Talk?

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About Voice.

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So in my work

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just to pull together what Dylan so graciously

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said. I study the social implications

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of communication technology with a focus on

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the role of digital and mobile media

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in the lives of young people

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but particularly in the lives of young people with developmental

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disabilities.

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So that's in particular

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autistic youth and

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young people with significant communication

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impairments

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particularly related to something called

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childhood apraxia of speech, which is basically

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when the brain has difficulty coordinating the

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the body parts that are needed.

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to talk.

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So I think about communication across different

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levels

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So some of these young people, instead of talking in ways that

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you might think of in the traditional sense

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use some thing like what Stephen Hawkings

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uses, but instead

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nowadays instead of having to

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necessarily use a device that is bigger, more expensive

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breaks, and takes a long time to replace

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you could potentially use what I have pictured on the bottom here

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is an iPad with this one app called

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Proloquo2Go and

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you can select text

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and icons and it will fill in this top white

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bar and you can press the bar and

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speech will be output.

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The language, the software is a little less sophisticated

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than what can be created in

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a bigger computer than that but

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it can do a lot of work.

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So with those unfamiliar, some of these technologies

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sometimes they're called voice output communication aids,

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speech generating devices,

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or augmentative and alternative communication devices.

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Which is ironically a mouthful to say.

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So I'm just going to say AAC for short.

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So because the users of these technologies

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don't talk in the traditional sense

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and because they use speech generating devices to communicate

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the popular press has historically referred to

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these types of technologies in a way

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in which the users of them get

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figured as voiceless.

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So the top headline says

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it's from the LA Times

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It says Electronic Help for the Handicapped

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The Voiceless Break Their Silence.

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That's a headline about a technology called the Canon Communicator.

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So Canon the company you might think of as cameras

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produced a device that was

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specifically focused on

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voice and voice output.

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Or, sorry, electronic voice generation.

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2012, pretty similar headline.

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This is about the iPad giving voice to kids with autism.

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But the question I'm really interested in is

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What does it mean for technology to give voice

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to the voiceless?

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And who does that phrase actually help or hurt in the process.

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So to answer that question I'm going to discuss three things.

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I'm going to talk first about the broader significance of this phrase

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"Giving voice to the voiceless"

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It's a phrase you might have heard but not necessarily taken a critical angle towards

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Why it's an important concept to critique, especially

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for people with disabilities.

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And third, how thinking differently about voice and

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voicelessness in this way, I think, can

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more broadly create meaningful change

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around technology and ethical considerations

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more broadly.

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Speaking of ethics...

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So before I go much further I

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also want to make clear that

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I do not personally identify as having a disability.

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I am also a white, cis, straight

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upper-middle class woman.

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So I'm sensitive to the power inherent in interpreting and

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sharing the experiences of others

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through my analytic lens.

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But I also believe that disability is at the heart of the human experience.

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I think this picture here gets at that.

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So it's a picture taken by Tom Olin

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at an ADA march in the early 90s.

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People of various racial backgrounds,

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people with various physical

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and what not disabilities marching under a banner

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of Martin Luther King Jr.'s quote, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,"

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So I think that something that is really brought out in this picture

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is that despite structures that systematically

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isolate and remove people with disabilities from

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the center of society, we have to think about

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the ways in which how we define the ways it means to be human

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and then even within that I would say

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because there is the MLK quote here, about the intersections of disability with

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other kinds of identities and other potentialities for marginalization as well.

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With that being said

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What does it mean to give voice to the voiceless?

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What does "giving voice" mean?

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We might locate its origins biblically.

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In the New International version

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Proverbs 31:8 says, Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves

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for the rights of all who are destitute.

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So not only do you get allusions about voice and speaking but

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also a class dimension to this as well.

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We might locate, in terms of how this is trace through different

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professional groups, different

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actors in the public sphere

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journalists. So this

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a screenshot of the Society of Professional Journalists

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their Code of Ethics.

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And one line of this is that journalists

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a key journalistic duty is to be vigilant

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and courageous about holding those with power accountable.

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Give voice to the voiceless.

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Moving from just sort of actors to also thinking about

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other kinds of technologies

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we can think about an endless list of things.

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whether it's civic media, Twitter

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or Open Data, as pictured here, as sort of giving voice.

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This is from the Open Data Institute Summit, 2015.

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The speaker's talk is "Citizen empowerment: giving a voice to the voiceless"

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All too often, though, we consider this background

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disability becomes instrumental

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for another purpose outside of

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just disability focused issues.

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It tends to represent something broken for

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technology to repair.

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So consider, this is Microsoft's Super Bowl commercial

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from 2014

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So long after Apple had its

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big Super Bowl commercial in the 80s

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it took until 2014 for Microsoft to have its entry point

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and disability is front and center here.

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It features NFL player Steve Gleeson who lost

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the ability to produce oral speech due to

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ALS and the ad proclaims that

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the Microsoft Surface Pro, which is pictured here, has

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given voice to the voiceless.

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And this gets exemplified by Gleeson himself

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providing the voiceover for the commercial.

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So we can say, and I don't have the time to play the commercial, but encourage you

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to take a look at it,

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in its entirety,

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but we can say then that giving voice to the voiceless means

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a couple of things. It means

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that voice is used as a metaphor for

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for agency and self-representation

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That voicelessness is

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is imagined as a stable and natural category

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so THE voiceless is a thing that we can locate.

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and as a sort of immutable thing.

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And technology is figured as a direct opportunity, this frictionless opportunity

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for expression.

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So there is a lot to critique about each of

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those kinds of claims

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But why do I think it's particularly important to do so?

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Particularly at this moment in time.

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That's because, based on the ethnographic research

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that I conducted, despite these widespread claims

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to "give voice to the voiceless"

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communication technologies that are intended to

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universally empower are still subject to disempowering

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structural inequalities,

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and especially for people with disabilities.

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So in my book "Giving Voice"

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I argue that efforts to better include disabled individuals

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within society through primarily

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technological interventions

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when all we do is fetishize and focus on the technology,

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for whatever kind of commercial or affective reasons,

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we miss the opportunity to take into account all the other ways

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in which culture, law, policy

275
00:13:04,360 --> 00:13:06,320
and even the design of these technologies themselves

276
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can marginalize and exclude.

277
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So the book is based on a 16 month ethnographic study that I conducted

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of young people who use the iPad and

279
00:13:17,220 --> 00:13:18,980
that Proloquo2Go app. Kids about 3 to 13.

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I spent some time observing them getting trained how to use

281
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the technologies at home with speech pathologists

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I followed them to different user groups that young people

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00:13:30,420 --> 00:13:32,180
would use to talk to one another

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I went to parent conferences. I also started

285
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to interview different kinds of assistive technology

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00:13:38,060 --> 00:13:41,340
administrators that were in the local Southern California area

287
00:13:41,580 --> 00:13:43,900
and lots of variations across

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better, more resourced and less resourced school districts

289
00:13:46,560 --> 00:13:48,160
larger, and small ones,

290
00:13:48,160 --> 00:13:52,220
to get a sense of what were the other kinds of systems that were shaping the

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00:13:52,580 --> 00:13:54,660
adoption, use, or potentially

292
00:13:54,660 --> 00:13:57,040
the non-use of these technologies.

293
00:13:58,260 --> 00:14:02,020
So in terms of culture, I'm just going to go through three

294
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examples quickly.

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Most speech generating devices are in English.

296
00:14:08,200 --> 00:14:11,160
The ones that are given to kids in US schools.

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At home, that is not something that everyone uses to speak.

298
00:14:15,580 --> 00:14:18,620
You automatically can create a disconnect there

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between what a home culture is and what a school culture is.

300
00:14:23,340 --> 00:14:26,320
So one specialist I talked to said "There are hundreds of languages

301
00:14:26,320 --> 00:14:28,040
in these schools. One of the kids

302
00:14:28,040 --> 00:14:30,720
I work with, at home, his parents speak Korean.

303
00:14:31,840 --> 00:14:34,800
Any kind of assistive communication system

304
00:14:34,800 --> 00:14:37,120
They wouldn't use it because they don't speak it.

305
00:14:37,120 --> 00:14:39,900
It's a big issue. We are stuck just doing school-based

306
00:14:39,900 --> 00:14:41,740
which is find, that's our job, but

307
00:14:41,740 --> 00:14:43,400
it's hard. It's hard to support them acorss

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00:14:43,560 --> 00:14:45,400
the board because we can't.

309
00:14:45,760 --> 00:14:48,720
So we could say that here voice is given but then

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it's also simultaneously muted.

311
00:14:53,420 --> 00:14:54,700
With respect to law

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00:14:54,900 --> 00:14:57,540
Assistive technologies are also quite

313
00:14:57,780 --> 00:14:59,460
bluntly, borne of a world

314
00:14:59,460 --> 00:15:02,380
in which half of the people who die at the hands

315
00:15:03,000 --> 00:15:04,920
of police have a disability.

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00:15:04,920 --> 00:15:08,380
There's a 2016 report from the Ruderman Family Foundation if you want to

317
00:15:08,580 --> 00:15:09,940
take a greater look at that.

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00:15:09,940 --> 00:15:12,660
But this is something that Danny's dad Peter tapped into

319
00:15:13,180 --> 00:15:16,380
when he talked about a fear that a police officer

320
00:15:16,380 --> 00:15:19,020
might mistake his son reaching for his communication

321
00:15:19,020 --> 00:15:21,180
device as reaching for a weapon.

322
00:15:21,180 --> 00:15:23,960
So he said, "I need him to be able to gesture 'yes'

323
00:15:23,960 --> 00:15:25,540
and 'no'. If a cop's asking

324
00:15:25,540 --> 00:15:28,480
him questions and has got a gun on him, no cop in the world

325
00:15:28,520 --> 00:15:30,040
is going to allow him to

326
00:15:30,280 --> 00:15:31,900
grab a talker."

327
00:15:32,660 --> 00:15:34,900
So this awareness of the limits of

328
00:15:34,900 --> 00:15:36,820
any given piece of technology

329
00:15:36,820 --> 00:15:39,700
in a particular context around justice and injustice

330
00:15:40,560 --> 00:15:44,240
was something that participants were keenly aware of.

331
00:15:44,240 --> 00:15:47,200
That is not necessarily something that is reflected in this broader discourse.

332
00:15:47,200 --> 00:15:50,660
So giving voice can also run the risk of being silenced.

333
00:15:50,660 --> 00:15:52,780
Quite literally, permanently.

334
00:15:54,760 --> 00:15:57,400
Lastly, all of this has to be understood

335
00:15:57,400 --> 00:15:58,980
in a larger policy backdrop

336
00:15:58,980 --> 00:16:02,780
So school district policies, what I found, tend to promote

337
00:16:02,780 --> 00:16:05,680
there financial investments protecting those

338
00:16:05,680 --> 00:16:08,500
more so than promoting students' continued growth.

339
00:16:08,760 --> 00:16:12,360
This is something that Moira's mom Vanessa related to

340
00:16:12,360 --> 00:16:14,920
in her story. So, in Southern California, kids

341
00:16:15,640 --> 00:16:18,200
had been throwing the iPads into pools

342
00:16:18,200 --> 00:16:21,240
this is what the mom was told and because of that the school

343
00:16:21,240 --> 00:16:24,160
decided that they were not going to allow the kids to take

344
00:16:24,160 --> 00:16:26,500
those iPads off campus, even though

345
00:16:26,500 --> 00:16:29,060
they were federally mandated to provide the child

346
00:16:29,480 --> 00:16:31,720
a way in which to communicate with others.

347
00:16:32,440 --> 00:16:35,000
So we're bounding that within the school.

348
00:16:35,460 --> 00:16:37,700
And the ability to challenge that

349
00:16:37,700 --> 00:16:41,000
is completely shaped by one's access to other kinds of

350
00:16:41,000 --> 00:16:43,460
resources: financial aid, legal assistance,

351
00:16:43,460 --> 00:16:44,600
and social capital.

352
00:16:45,020 --> 00:16:47,900
So Vanessa said to me, "The school district

353
00:16:47,900 --> 00:16:50,500
changed their policy and said that iPads only remained

354
00:16:50,500 --> 00:16:52,340
on campus, which was in voilation of

355
00:16:52,340 --> 00:16:54,140
Moira's IEP. I wrote them and

356
00:16:54,920 --> 00:16:56,760
said, 'This is in violation

357
00:16:56,760 --> 00:16:58,700
I'm asking that you give me a window of opportunity

358
00:16:59,140 --> 00:17:01,540
to purchase her a device for the home

359
00:17:02,700 --> 00:17:04,140
One morning I was like

360
00:17:04,140 --> 00:17:07,420
'I don't want to send this iPad to school.' I of course gave it to her

361
00:17:07,420 --> 00:17:09,000
and it didn't come home."

362
00:17:10,160 --> 00:17:13,200
So we could say here also, yes, voice is given,

363
00:17:13,319 --> 00:17:14,999
but then it's taken away.

364
00:17:19,920 --> 00:17:22,880
So how does one particular kind of case get at

365
00:17:22,880 --> 00:17:26,300
some of these larger frameworks with which we understand

366
00:17:26,300 --> 00:17:27,599
technology and ethics.

367
00:17:28,040 --> 00:17:31,000
So my overall takeaway is that we should keep

368
00:17:31,000 --> 00:17:32,560
voices attached to people.

369
00:17:33,160 --> 00:17:36,520
So I'm drawing here on an historian, Katherine Oft,

370
00:17:36,820 --> 00:17:38,500
who's at the Smithsonian

371
00:17:38,500 --> 00:17:42,760
She's written an introduction to this book, this is a picture of the cover,

372
00:17:42,760 --> 00:17:45,780
It's called "Artificial Parts, Practical Lives

373
00:17:45,780 --> 00:17:47,640
Modern Histories of Prosthetics"

374
00:17:47,640 --> 00:17:49,240
and she writes, "Focus on the materiality

375
00:17:49,240 --> 00:17:51,620
of the body, not only or exclusively

376
00:17:51,820 --> 00:17:54,460
its abstract and metaphoric meanings.

377
00:17:54,460 --> 00:17:58,220
Keeping protheses attached to people limits the kinds of

378
00:17:58,220 --> 00:18:01,060
claims and interpretive leaps a writer can make."

379
00:18:02,900 --> 00:18:06,180
So I think, as well, staying very close to the body

380
00:18:06,180 --> 00:18:09,140
staying very close to the material and embodied aspects of

381
00:18:09,140 --> 00:18:11,560
voice is the only way for us to understand

382
00:18:12,280 --> 00:18:14,120
the uses and abuses of voice

383
00:18:14,120 --> 00:18:16,420
in relation to other kinds of inequalities and injustices.

384
00:18:18,060 --> 00:18:21,100
I will just go through two applications of this

385
00:18:21,780 --> 00:18:23,220
in terms of what I

386
00:18:23,220 --> 00:18:26,180
use with my students to talk about politics in two ways.

387
00:18:26,180 --> 00:18:29,460
Politics in sort of 'Big P Politics', so electoral politics

388
00:18:29,460 --> 00:18:31,340
And 'little p politics'

389
00:18:31,860 --> 00:18:34,980
which is power and its various manifestations.

390
00:18:34,980 --> 00:18:37,320
And those two things are related to one another but its a simple

391
00:18:37,320 --> 00:18:38,620
way to kind of split it up.

392
00:18:38,620 --> 00:18:41,960
Trigger warning, there is a picture of Donald Trump

393
00:18:41,960 --> 00:18:44,380
on the next slide. I'm just letting you know. [Audience laughs].

394
00:18:45,740 --> 00:18:50,060
So with Big P Politics we need to keep voices attached to citizens

395
00:18:50,200 --> 00:18:52,840
in our democracy. Despite Donald Trump's

396
00:18:53,060 --> 00:18:56,660
demagogic insistence that he is literally our voice.

397
00:18:58,040 --> 00:19:00,520
This is New York Times, July 22, 2016.

398
00:19:01,260 --> 00:19:03,420
Front page of newyorktimes.com

399
00:19:03,960 --> 00:19:07,080
This is right after Trump's acceptance speech

400
00:19:08,740 --> 00:19:09,700
at the INC Convention

401
00:19:11,380 --> 00:19:16,620
"Trump Pledges..." Headline, it's a picture of Trump smiling and a very large close up version of him

402
00:19:18,120 --> 00:19:19,960
smiling in the background projected on the screen, and it says

403
00:19:20,780 --> 00:19:23,900
"Trump Pledges Order and Says: I Am Your Voice"

404
00:19:24,520 --> 00:19:29,640
Let's think about that in relation to ways in which people with disabilities

405
00:19:30,400 --> 00:19:33,280
potentially have some quibbles with that.

406
00:19:34,100 --> 00:19:37,300
So this is a screenshot from CNN's projection of

407
00:19:38,920 --> 00:19:43,140
at the DNC, a disabled self-advocate

408
00:19:43,340 --> 00:19:44,840
Anastasia Somoza

409
00:19:44,840 --> 00:19:47,000
directly responding to Trump's call saying Donald Trump

410
00:19:48,060 --> 00:19:49,100
doesn't hear me

411
00:19:49,100 --> 00:19:52,240
he doesn't see me and he definitely doesn't speak for me.

412
00:19:52,240 --> 00:19:54,660
So this pulling through of ways in which voice

413
00:19:54,660 --> 00:19:57,140
is getting used and abused in particular ways

414
00:19:57,140 --> 00:20:00,740
it is not something that people with disabilities are...

415
00:20:01,140 --> 00:20:03,700
They are the ones that we need to look to

416
00:20:03,920 --> 00:20:06,880
and draw upon sort of histories of resources

417
00:20:06,920 --> 00:20:08,520
in which to grapple with

418
00:20:08,700 --> 00:20:10,620
the uses of language

419
00:20:10,620 --> 00:20:13,520
in ways that more often exclude than include.

420
00:20:14,680 --> 00:20:16,440
On a technological aspect

421
00:20:16,440 --> 00:20:20,880
nowadays there's a lot of interest in voice activated technologies

422
00:20:21,420 --> 00:20:23,660
so Siri and Alexa

423
00:20:24,020 --> 00:20:26,720
and in some ways those can be really accessible.

424
00:20:26,720 --> 00:20:29,560
Those can add, if you have motor limitations, other ways

425
00:20:29,760 --> 00:20:31,180
to access.

426
00:20:31,180 --> 00:20:34,600
But we have to think about what kinds of voices get picked up

427
00:20:35,020 --> 00:20:37,160
This is just a headline that says "Voice is the next big platform..."

428
00:20:37,160 --> 00:20:41,220
But then here's another headline from Scientific american, "Why Siri won't listen

429
00:20:41,220 --> 00:20:44,000
to millions of people with disaiblities.

430
00:20:44,000 --> 00:20:47,180
There are particular ways in which voices are recognized or are not recognized.

431
00:20:47,880 --> 00:20:51,480
Let alone just the kinds of voices that can be produced

432
00:20:51,480 --> 00:20:53,240
by a given piece of technology

433
00:20:55,380 --> 00:20:57,380
So ideas about the normal here

434
00:20:57,380 --> 00:20:58,880
and what it means to have a voice

435
00:21:00,000 --> 00:21:02,320
or more critical considerations.

436
00:21:03,400 --> 00:21:05,560
So to wrap up, technologies that

437
00:21:05,560 --> 00:21:07,100
give a voice to the voiceless

438
00:21:07,100 --> 00:21:09,360
can also reproduce structural inequalities

439
00:21:11,180 --> 00:21:13,180
Having a voice and being heard

440
00:21:13,180 --> 00:21:14,320
are not necessarily the same things at all.

441
00:21:14,320 --> 00:21:16,540
And they're also not just about technology.

442
00:21:16,540 --> 00:21:19,260
But also about social, cultural and economic resources.

443
00:21:19,260 --> 00:21:22,460
And having access to which is unevenly distributed.

444
00:21:23,520 --> 00:21:27,120
My book centers the iPad but it's interesting because

445
00:21:27,120 --> 00:21:30,580
I am really interested in what some people might call

446
00:21:30,880 --> 00:21:31,840
an edge case or

447
00:21:31,840 --> 00:21:33,560
you know, a sort of outside case, but

448
00:21:33,560 --> 00:21:37,060
I really believe there's something to think about marginalization and

449
00:21:37,800 --> 00:21:39,160
participation that

450
00:21:39,520 --> 00:21:41,920
is really actually super central to

451
00:21:41,920 --> 00:21:43,480
to what we're all trying to get at.

452
00:21:43,480 --> 00:21:46,980
in terms of understanding what it means to participate.

453
00:21:48,000 --> 00:21:50,620
So we need to keep voices materially attached to people

454
00:21:50,820 --> 00:21:53,300
in how we build our technology or else

455
00:21:54,400 --> 00:21:56,080
the risk is tantamount to dismantling...

456
00:21:58,100 --> 00:22:00,620
Or if we can say the structure of democracy has been

457
00:22:00,620 --> 00:22:01,720
stable to begin with...

458
00:22:01,720 --> 00:22:03,160
Also an open question.

459
00:22:03,160 --> 00:22:05,820
But at stake is not only which voices get to

460
00:22:05,820 --> 00:22:08,160
speak but who's thought to have a voice to speak with

461
00:22:08,160 --> 00:22:09,260
in the first place.

462
00:22:09,260 --> 00:22:12,460
And that's my talk. [Applause from the audience].

463
00:23:01,960 --> 00:23:05,080
Alright, so thank you for having me here today.

464
00:23:06,600 --> 00:23:09,800
I am happy to have a chance to talk about this work

465
00:23:09,800 --> 00:23:12,260
in conjunction with Meryl's work, because we've been

466
00:23:12,460 --> 00:23:14,940
batting around some of the same ideas

467
00:23:16,120 --> 00:23:18,920
regarding access, voice, participation

468
00:23:20,020 --> 00:23:22,180
and technology and disability.

469
00:23:22,360 --> 00:23:27,780
I've been framing my work as, essentially, cultural studies of technology.

470
00:23:28,260 --> 00:23:31,300
I'm attempting to understand how technologies

471
00:23:31,300 --> 00:23:33,700
reflect and reproduce particular dynamics of

472
00:23:34,900 --> 00:23:37,140
power and how users of technologies

473
00:23:37,820 --> 00:23:40,540
can push back upon those constructions.

474
00:23:43,040 --> 00:23:45,760
and challenge these sort of received ways in which

475
00:23:46,600 --> 00:23:50,440
technologies are developed along certain assumptions.

476
00:23:50,440 --> 00:23:55,620
I'm going to be reading from my phone because I get lost on a large piece of paper.

477
00:23:57,340 --> 00:24:01,820
To start off here we have some images reflecting a sort of pervasive

478
00:24:02,900 --> 00:24:05,780
utopianism in talking about the internet,

479
00:24:05,780 --> 00:24:07,420
World Wide Web, and related technologies.

480
00:24:08,720 --> 00:24:12,640
At the top right is an image from MCI's "Anthem Commercial"

481
00:24:12,640 --> 00:24:15,980
This young person appears speaking in American Sign Language

482
00:24:15,980 --> 00:24:19,020
right before text that reads "there are no infirmities."

483
00:24:21,180 --> 00:24:23,900
The TIME 2006 "Person of the Year" was You

484
00:24:24,040 --> 00:24:25,960
with a big reflective cover.

485
00:24:25,960 --> 00:24:29,500
And then this bottom photo is a screenshot from a Yahoo!

486
00:24:29,560 --> 00:24:32,440
advertisement from 2009 called "It's You"

487
00:24:32,440 --> 00:24:37,080
prioritizing this kind of individual empowerment and excitement around

488
00:24:37,580 --> 00:24:38,860
new technologies.

489
00:24:38,860 --> 00:24:42,120
At various points these technologies have been understood as

490
00:24:42,760 --> 00:24:46,120
democratizing, globalizing, something that can

491
00:24:46,120 --> 00:24:48,680
eradicate racial, gender and disability difference

492
00:24:48,680 --> 00:24:52,680
and something that can open economic and social opportunities.

493
00:24:53,200 --> 00:24:57,040
From the hype of cyberspace to the celebrations of Web 2.0

494
00:24:57,040 --> 00:25:00,620
we see that stories of technology are often stories of

495
00:25:00,820 --> 00:25:02,340
endless possibility.

496
00:25:02,340 --> 00:25:07,540
In "Restricted Access" I am attempting to intervene in some of these celebrations.

497
00:25:07,540 --> 00:25:10,320
by investigating digital media accessibility

498
00:25:10,320 --> 00:25:13,580
the processes by which digital media is made useable

499
00:25:13,580 --> 00:25:15,020
by people with disabilities

500
00:25:15,380 --> 00:25:18,740
and arguing for the necessity of conceptualizing

501
00:25:20,700 --> 00:25:22,780
access in a way that will be more

502
00:25:23,680 --> 00:25:26,560
variable, and open opportunity in new ways.

503
00:25:27,380 --> 00:25:32,100
So after all, I argue if digital media only open up these opportunities

504
00:25:32,180 --> 00:25:35,460
to people who are already relatively privileged

505
00:25:35,460 --> 00:25:38,120
in terms of their ability to access technology

506
00:25:38,120 --> 00:25:41,160
then their progressive potential remains unrealized.

507
00:25:42,020 --> 00:25:46,260
If not transformed into a means of upholding those varying inequalities.

508
00:25:49,040 --> 00:25:52,640
Now what is media accessibility, web accessibility?

509
00:25:53,060 --> 00:25:56,580
This is something I often illustrate with this slide

510
00:25:56,580 --> 00:26:00,240
which is just a screen shot of the homepage of The New York Times

511
00:26:01,260 --> 00:26:04,380
as run through the Web Accessibility and Minds

512
00:26:04,920 --> 00:26:07,080
Online Accessibility Checker.

513
00:26:07,080 --> 00:26:10,780
This is an automatic software tool that will check the HTML

514
00:26:10,820 --> 00:26:12,980
and associated code of a web page

515
00:26:13,700 --> 00:26:16,340
and flag with little red or yellow icons

516
00:26:16,340 --> 00:26:18,260
where there might be a problem.

517
00:26:21,220 --> 00:26:24,100
So in this case the page is being flagged for

518
00:26:24,100 --> 00:26:26,260
not describing the image that reads "New York Times"

519
00:26:26,980 --> 00:26:29,380
for not describing the small images

520
00:26:31,120 --> 00:26:33,920
and for having some incorrect form usage.

521
00:26:36,160 --> 00:26:39,520
Now, accessibility is a fascinating case because

522
00:26:42,160 --> 00:26:44,160
it is a very granular process.

523
00:26:45,240 --> 00:26:48,760
Essentially web content accessibility comes out of

524
00:26:49,100 --> 00:26:51,420
non-governmental policy sources

525
00:26:51,420 --> 00:26:53,160
such as the World Wide Web Consortium

526
00:26:53,820 --> 00:26:57,180
It has also been taken up in various legal contexts

527
00:26:57,180 --> 00:27:00,820
so there are laws in the United States that require accessibility in some contexts

528
00:27:00,860 --> 00:27:05,340
and there are arguments that the ADA requires web accessibility in

529
00:27:06,000 --> 00:27:07,040
many contexts.

530
00:27:09,000 --> 00:27:12,600
However, these policies are written in such a way that

531
00:27:13,360 --> 00:27:16,400
to facilitate the use of consumer technology

532
00:27:16,420 --> 00:27:21,960
with the kinds of adaptive and assistive technologies that Meryl gestured towards.

533
00:27:22,540 --> 00:27:26,480
Things like screen readers, alternative input devices like

534
00:27:26,800 --> 00:27:28,640
tongue typers, joysticks,

535
00:27:28,800 --> 00:27:31,040
these technologies are often key

536
00:27:31,040 --> 00:27:33,920
in allowing people with disabilities to use technology

537
00:27:33,920 --> 00:27:38,740
and accessibility ensures that software will work with those technologies.

538
00:27:39,660 --> 00:27:43,660
However, accessibility, generally, has to be implemented

539
00:27:43,660 --> 00:27:46,900
by individual companies, developers, website operators

540
00:27:47,720 --> 00:27:51,080
and is therefore a highly distributed phenomenon.

541
00:27:53,260 --> 00:27:57,500
There is no automatic way of understanding where this happens.

542
00:27:57,500 --> 00:28:02,940
Thus a lot of my research has involved tracking digital media accessibility through

543
00:28:03,400 --> 00:28:08,040
the policy makers, people working with the World Wide Web Consortium

544
00:28:08,040 --> 00:28:10,900
people working in government, in academic contexts,

545
00:28:11,460 --> 00:28:14,260
as well as with developers, consultants,

546
00:28:14,260 --> 00:28:18,240
sometimes marketing departments are in charge of accessibility,

547
00:28:18,600 --> 00:28:22,840
internal standards, a lot of major corporations have their own

548
00:28:22,840 --> 00:28:24,500
accessibility standards that

549
00:28:25,020 --> 00:28:28,220
are different to what we see in the public sphere

550
00:28:29,300 --> 00:28:34,740
and so in these terms accessibility may be understood in highly bureaucratic and

551
00:28:34,780 --> 00:28:37,500
technical. It creates a kind of base line

552
00:28:37,500 --> 00:28:42,040
from which there is a possibility that people with disabilities may then access

553
00:28:42,040 --> 00:28:43,340
and use digital media.

554
00:28:44,920 --> 00:28:51,080
In thinking about accessibility, however, it is important to think about the terminology.

555
00:28:51,560 --> 00:28:54,760
Because "accessibility", like "access", is an

556
00:28:55,100 --> 00:28:58,220
often-used term that is not always attached to

557
00:28:58,220 --> 00:29:00,140
these kinds of specialized meanings.

558
00:29:04,480 --> 00:29:08,880
I often see accessibility invoked to refer to new possibilities.

559
00:29:08,880 --> 00:29:11,540
The graphical user interface made desktop computing more accessible

560
00:29:11,540 --> 00:29:13,080
to a large number of people.

561
00:29:13,080 --> 00:29:17,720
Even as it very much shut down access for people who are visually impaired.

562
00:29:19,120 --> 00:29:22,480
Right, so we access deployed in various contexts.

563
00:29:22,480 --> 00:29:26,820
Additionally, access to media and information technologies has been a

564
00:29:26,820 --> 00:29:29,840
addressed in a wide range of academic literatures.

565
00:29:29,840 --> 00:29:33,540
From digital divides work to work on public broadcasting,

566
00:29:33,540 --> 00:29:36,140
community television, media literacy

567
00:29:36,940 --> 00:29:38,460
and media policy work.

568
00:29:39,780 --> 00:29:41,380
But in all of these areas

569
00:29:41,380 --> 00:29:44,800
access is dominantly figured as something which is "had".

570
00:29:45,120 --> 00:29:46,560
Do you "have" access?

571
00:29:48,420 --> 00:29:51,140
A sort of unitary and universally desired endpoint.

572
00:29:51,140 --> 00:29:53,740
Do you have access? It is good to have access.

573
00:29:53,740 --> 00:29:57,220
And in addition to this sort of positive and linear framing

574
00:29:57,220 --> 00:30:00,440
the concept of access is often deployed in such a way

575
00:30:01,880 --> 00:30:04,120
as to stand in for "availability"

576
00:30:04,120 --> 00:30:09,900
(you have access to the telephone lines as they connect to your house, even if you don't have a telephone),

577
00:30:09,900 --> 00:30:15,020
"affordability" (this is a subsidized service so therefore in some sort of way therefore

578
00:30:15,020 --> 00:30:17,440
it is more accessible), or "consumer choice"

579
00:30:19,060 --> 00:30:21,620
(you have access to 590 cable channels

580
00:30:21,620 --> 00:30:23,520
whether you want them all or not).

581
00:30:25,540 --> 00:30:27,620
So "access" is a flexible term.

582
00:30:27,920 --> 00:30:34,880
But when we center disability and accessibility and their specialized senses, the gaps in some of these

583
00:30:35,100 --> 00:30:37,100
literatures and usages emerge.

584
00:30:37,100 --> 00:30:40,580
In fact, it seems that access is inherently variable.

585
00:30:40,580 --> 00:30:44,340
It's dependant upon bodies, contacts and a host of other factors.

586
00:30:44,980 --> 00:30:49,380
When we say "check Facebook", we are potentially engaged in a wide

587
00:30:49,380 --> 00:30:52,700
range of technological and social practices that vary

588
00:30:52,700 --> 00:30:54,060
from person to person.

589
00:30:54,060 --> 00:30:58,320
As argued by Canadian disabilities scholar Tanya Titchkosky

590
00:30:58,320 --> 00:31:03,420
quote, "every single instance of life can be regarded as tied to access. To do anything is

591
00:31:03,980 --> 00:31:08,300
to have some form of access." Thus, rather than think of access as

592
00:31:08,300 --> 00:31:11,780
a binary, or linear progression, disability studies

593
00:31:11,780 --> 00:31:15,260
encourages us to conceive of it as a continually relationally

594
00:31:15,260 --> 00:31:17,980
produced means of engaging with the world.

595
00:31:19,120 --> 00:31:22,400
So we don't "have" access, we are "doing" access.

596
00:31:23,440 --> 00:31:28,960
Now in "Restricted Access" I use this a sort of jumping off point for thinking about

597
00:31:28,960 --> 00:31:33,880
how then can we study access as an infinitely variable and complicated phenomenon.

598
00:31:33,880 --> 00:31:37,480
Right? This is starting to sound impossible, if every

599
00:31:37,480 --> 00:31:39,280
construction of access is different.

600
00:31:39,520 --> 00:31:43,600
And thus I've been using the metaphor of a kind of "Access Kit"

601
00:31:43,600 --> 00:31:45,980
illustrated here with a sewing kit with

602
00:31:45,980 --> 00:31:52,740
a pair of scissors, some safety pins, needles, a thimble, other things you use for sewing... I'm not a sewer.

603
00:31:54,060 --> 00:32:00,540
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.

604
00:32:02,300 --> 00:32:05,420
You can use this to sew.

605
00:32:05,420 --> 00:32:08,300
Or you can take pieces and parts and use them differently.

606
00:32:08,300 --> 00:32:11,520
You might cut up something in your kitchen, you might use the safety pin

607
00:32:13,100 --> 00:32:14,700
to make a punk t-shirt or

608
00:32:14,880 --> 00:32:18,080
signal your safety in a post Donald Trump world.

609
00:32:19,800 --> 00:32:22,680
You may recombine these in different ways.

610
00:32:22,680 --> 00:32:28,260
And thus in sort of figuring access kit, what are some sort of categories of questions?

611
00:32:28,260 --> 00:32:31,560
What are some sort of ways that we can dig into access

612
00:32:31,560 --> 00:32:36,820
that will allow us to look through some different lenses at how that access is being created?

613
00:32:36,820 --> 00:32:43,240
I'm not going to go into detail here, except to say that I sort of loosely grouped these into categories of

614
00:32:43,940 --> 00:32:47,220
regulation, use, form, content and experience.

615
00:32:47,380 --> 00:32:49,300
Which I can talk about later.

616
00:32:49,300 --> 00:32:54,560
And together they encourage us to think about access as a relational phenomenon.

617
00:32:54,560 --> 00:32:57,820
Drawing attention to what a cultural studies perspective might call

618
00:32:57,840 --> 00:33:04,320
the articulations of bodies, technologies, institutions, geographies and social identities.

619
00:33:04,820 --> 00:33:10,100
So access is not one thing, but many. Not an end point, but also not a beginning.

620
00:33:10,100 --> 00:33:14,800
Nico Carpentier has referred to access as a precondition for participation

621
00:33:14,800 --> 00:33:16,720
before we can participate we must access

622
00:33:17,300 --> 00:33:21,940
but through the study of digital media accessibility for disability

623
00:33:22,800 --> 00:33:29,800
it's become evident to me that the production of access is an on-going part of participation in a digitally mediated society.

624
00:33:30,960 --> 00:33:35,280
Now one of my favourite examples in the book is the case of Tumblr.

625
00:33:35,280 --> 00:33:40,380
As some of you probably know, Tumblr is a multimedia microblogging platform

626
00:33:43,020 --> 00:33:48,380
that is characterized by the sharing or reblogging of posts across the network,

627
00:33:48,380 --> 00:33:52,060
the formation of interest groups, and a lesser emphasis on individual identity display.

628
00:33:52,460 --> 00:33:54,300
Than many social networks.

629
00:33:55,180 --> 00:34:00,220
It is, however, populated by user generated content and thus not obviously

630
00:34:00,220 --> 00:34:05,500
bound by the legal and technical requirements faced in government, educational or ecommerce spaces.

631
00:34:06,660 --> 00:34:10,340
Perhaps as a result, Tumblr is formally inaccessible.

632
00:34:10,659 --> 00:34:16,099
It is difficult to add alternate text to images, even if you wanted to and knew how.

633
00:34:16,100 --> 00:34:21,320
It features infinite scroll, which can be a challenge for many assistive technologies,

634
00:34:21,320 --> 00:34:25,320
and it uses very limited mark up features to indicate importance.

635
00:34:26,360 --> 00:34:30,840
Additionally, the content is highly variable and often animated.

636
00:34:30,840 --> 00:34:35,400
Adding additional challenges from an accessibility perspective.

637
00:34:35,400 --> 00:34:41,719
So from a sort of top down perspective, the inaccessibility of Tumblr seems like a problem.

638
00:34:42,719 --> 00:34:47,518
However, in my work I've tried to couple the institutional perspective

639
00:34:48,100 --> 00:34:50,980
with a more on the ground user perspective.

640
00:34:51,280 --> 00:34:54,880
I did roughly 25 interviews with disabled users about

641
00:34:54,880 --> 00:34:58,500
how they use these technologies and why and what was frustrating.

642
00:34:59,780 --> 00:35:03,940
In these interviews I've got on the one hand, people telling me

643
00:35:03,940 --> 00:35:07,180
that they contact Tumblr and talked about the accessibility policies

644
00:35:07,620 --> 00:35:09,780
and were just totally rebuffed.

645
00:35:09,780 --> 00:35:13,180
Tumblr was not interested in talking to them, did not change anything.

646
00:35:16,160 --> 00:35:22,880
However, they also pointed towards group pages such as Accessibility Fail and F Yeah Accessibility

647
00:35:23,260 --> 00:35:28,380
as other places they were in fact finding community and using this platform.

648
00:35:30,600 --> 00:35:34,840
In some of these cases users were adopting and adapting Tumblr,

649
00:35:34,840 --> 00:35:38,020
sharing experiences of micro aggressions, sharing accessibility knowledge,

650
00:35:38,020 --> 00:35:42,300
teaching each other work arounds by which to make a site more accessible.

651
00:35:42,820 --> 00:35:46,420
Furthermore, this kind of grassroots accessibility

652
00:35:46,420 --> 00:35:49,320
revealed some different meanings of access.

653
00:35:49,320 --> 00:35:51,440
and the values associated with it.

654
00:35:52,020 --> 00:35:57,460
While accessibility is often through of as a matter of law, policy, or technology

655
00:35:59,760 --> 00:36:03,680
or the provision of services and a kind of charity model,

656
00:36:03,680 --> 00:36:08,340
many users were much more likely to talk about it in terms of affective and cultural dimensions.

657
00:36:08,720 --> 00:36:15,040
Many prioritized feeling welcomed rather than merely accommodated, or being included as

658
00:36:15,040 --> 00:36:17,700
members of a community rather than as afterthoughts.

659
00:36:18,980 --> 00:36:21,780
Or having their non-technical needs met.

660
00:36:21,780 --> 00:36:27,080
For instance, many disable Tumblr users praised the site because its large social justice community

661
00:36:27,080 --> 00:36:29,940
meant that trigger warnings were commonly used.

662
00:36:30,780 --> 00:36:36,460
Trigger warnings, or as we saw with Donal Trump, are a brief indication of when and how

663
00:36:36,460 --> 00:36:40,220
content might be upsetting for someone with a particular kind of trauma

664
00:36:40,220 --> 00:36:45,480
and they're well beyond the scope of technological accessibility policy. However, as one

665
00:36:45,480 --> 00:36:49,160
interviewee told me, "Trigger warnings make a site accessible to me."

666
00:36:49,160 --> 00:36:54,740
Indicating respect for the emotional and social needs that can often accompany disability.

667
00:36:54,820 --> 00:37:01,540
Building out of such examples, I end "Restricted Access" by talking about cultural accessibility

668
00:37:01,540 --> 00:37:04,800
as a means of moving towards a more accessible and just future.

669
00:37:04,800 --> 00:37:08,620
This moves beyond sort of technocentric notions of accessibility or

670
00:37:08,860 --> 00:37:14,460
accommodation and aims to highlight the interrelationships among technological

671
00:37:14,460 --> 00:37:20,840
and economic access, cultural representation and production, and access to community in the public sphere.

672
00:37:21,340 --> 00:37:26,780
Not simply universal design, cultural accessibility prioritizes the on-going

673
00:37:26,780 --> 00:37:31,740
perspectives and visibility of people with disabilities and it may best be achieved through

674
00:37:31,740 --> 00:37:37,400
sort of participatory collaborations between users, policy makers, industries and others.

675
00:37:39,240 --> 00:37:45,560
I've illustrated this concluding point with a screen shot of actress Teal Shearer, who created a web

676
00:37:45,560 --> 00:37:50,000
series called "My Gimpy Life" which she funded through Kickstarter.

677
00:37:50,120 --> 00:37:56,680
So already we're seeing a sort of host of contemporary digital media technologies brought to bear

678
00:37:58,380 --> 00:38:04,700
and in this case Shearer also prioritized disability, community and access both on screen and off.

679
00:38:04,700 --> 00:38:09,880
The web series had an onscreen credit to the person who produced the close captioning

680
00:38:09,880 --> 00:38:14,000
The Kickstarter page developed over time into more of a community space

681
00:38:14,020 --> 00:38:15,700
than a fundraising space

682
00:38:19,400 --> 00:38:24,600
and we see a range of relationships and connections forming that potentially

683
00:38:24,600 --> 00:38:30,280
enable the formation of community and the movement into a larger civic and public sphere.

684
00:38:31,240 --> 00:38:33,480
from inclusive cultural spaces.

685
00:38:33,480 --> 00:38:39,280
Ultimately then, I would argue that access is not simply a prerequisite to participation,

686
00:38:39,280 --> 00:38:42,289
access and participation depend upon one another.

687
00:38:42,289 --> 00:38:44,500
Just as access enables participation

688
00:38:46,020 --> 00:38:51,940
so does increased participation by diverse people make possible the expansion of access.

689
00:38:54,740 --> 00:38:56,820
And I will wrap it up there so that we have some time. [Audience applause].

690
00:39:11,000 --> 00:39:16,200
Okay I'm going to start with one question for the three of you and then we can open

691
00:39:16,200 --> 00:39:18,120
it up as quickly as possible to Q&A.

692
00:39:18,120 --> 00:39:22,680
So it strikes me that constantly all of our work is constantly playing

693
00:39:22,920 --> 00:39:28,120
catch up with lived experience and Ryan I'm thinking of your work with Herdict

694
00:39:28,120 --> 00:39:31,240
is in some way, is always trying to close that gap

695
00:39:33,140 --> 00:39:37,860
between lived experiences of blockages or clogs or censorship online

696
00:39:37,980 --> 00:39:41,820
and the point at which there is greater public awareness

697
00:39:41,880 --> 00:39:43,240
about those blockages.

698
00:39:45,600 --> 00:39:50,240
And scholarship by design is sort of laggy because of the time it takes

699
00:39:50,240 --> 00:39:53,980
to dwell on things and the time it takes to publish things

700
00:39:55,000 --> 00:39:57,080
so I wonder how each of you think

701
00:39:58,900 --> 00:40:02,340
about lagginess with regard to lived experience in

702
00:40:03,760 --> 00:40:05,280
each of your projects.

703
00:40:05,280 --> 00:40:07,000
Maybe we can start with Ryan.

704
00:40:10,380 --> 00:40:13,580
So I'll just first preface my response by saying

705
00:40:17,180 --> 00:40:20,380
as Dylan mentioned in my introduction I spend my

706
00:40:25,800 --> 00:40:28,920
work days thinking about access to technology

707
00:40:31,100 --> 00:40:34,380
and who controls these sort of elements of the web

708
00:40:35,960 --> 00:40:38,520
and the internet and our technologies

709
00:40:40,600 --> 00:40:45,160
but in my personal life as someone who wears hearing aids I think a lot

710
00:40:46,260 --> 00:40:49,380
sort of in the very specific use case of how that

711
00:40:51,020 --> 00:40:54,140
technology enables and limits me personally

712
00:40:55,080 --> 00:40:56,360
in different ways.

713
00:40:59,940 --> 00:41:01,060
And so I found the

714
00:41:01,720 --> 00:41:05,160
discussion from Liz and Meryl really interesting

715
00:41:06,260 --> 00:41:07,300
and important.

716
00:41:08,100 --> 00:41:11,620
So on this question of lagginess, you know, one of the

717
00:41:13,180 --> 00:41:15,260
things that really jumps out at

718
00:41:15,880 --> 00:41:18,520
me and I think picks up on something that

719
00:41:19,220 --> 00:41:21,300
Meryl was saying, was that this

720
00:41:21,940 --> 00:41:23,460
question of, you know,

721
00:41:25,300 --> 00:41:26,980
technology reproducing

722
00:41:29,260 --> 00:41:31,020
structural inequalities

723
00:41:33,860 --> 00:41:37,140
and something that I think is on that point is

724
00:41:38,200 --> 00:41:39,880
interesting to me is that

725
00:41:41,360 --> 00:41:42,160
I see a lot of

726
00:41:45,800 --> 00:41:48,360
convergence going on in technologies

727
00:41:49,360 --> 00:41:51,600
that, as Meryl's example showed,

728
00:41:51,780 --> 00:41:54,100
that people can use iPads which are

729
00:41:54,100 --> 00:41:56,780
consumer technologies to do things that

730
00:41:57,520 --> 00:41:59,440
earlier might have required

731
00:42:00,920 --> 00:42:03,480
going through a medical specialist or

732
00:42:07,680 --> 00:42:10,800
getting very expensive medical technologies

733
00:42:10,800 --> 00:42:13,280
and in the hearing aid market there is a lot of

734
00:42:15,140 --> 00:42:17,300
movement now to allow companies

735
00:42:17,300 --> 00:42:19,000
to sell things that aren't quite hearing aids

736
00:42:19,000 --> 00:42:21,360
but do essentially everything that

737
00:42:22,100 --> 00:42:23,540
a hearing aid could do

738
00:42:26,580 --> 00:42:28,740
and there is a lot of pros and cons

739
00:42:28,740 --> 00:42:31,980
to that approach, you know, there's the potential

740
00:42:31,980 --> 00:42:35,620
that it could lower the cost that a lot of people that don't get hearing aids

741
00:42:36,120 --> 00:42:38,280
could suddenly get hearing aids

742
00:42:39,360 --> 00:42:42,160
but no longer are they having it fine tuned

743
00:42:42,160 --> 00:42:43,360
by a medical professional

744
00:42:47,280 --> 00:42:49,760
and all of that, and so as you converge

745
00:42:52,220 --> 00:42:54,540
sort of mainstream technology and

746
00:42:54,540 --> 00:42:56,060
technology that helps people with disabilities

747
00:42:58,100 --> 00:42:59,700
in some ways I think that

748
00:43:00,020 --> 00:43:02,340
you can turn Meryl's question into

749
00:43:02,860 --> 00:43:03,980
or prompt around

750
00:43:06,060 --> 00:43:06,560
and say

751
00:43:07,520 --> 00:43:12,080
in what ways is all technology reinforcing societal and structural

752
00:43:15,020 --> 00:43:18,300
inequalities and, you know, to Sarah Hendren has

753
00:43:18,300 --> 00:43:20,340
talked about how all technology is

754
00:43:20,340 --> 00:43:23,840
assistive technology. You know, we're not naturally born with

755
00:43:24,200 --> 00:43:27,240
the ability to get our emails on our wrists and

756
00:43:27,240 --> 00:43:30,420
you know, and yet, technology enables us to do that.

757
00:43:33,680 --> 00:43:37,760
So in what ways is technology that all of us are using in assistive ways

758
00:43:39,900 --> 00:43:44,300
reproducing things that maybe we should be taking a closer look at?

759
00:43:46,740 --> 00:43:48,900
One example that comes to mind is

760
00:43:52,280 --> 00:43:53,960
how autonomous vehicles

761
00:43:53,960 --> 00:43:57,540
are certainly something, you know, to talk about access,

762
00:43:58,540 --> 00:44:00,780
can potentially allow people who

763
00:44:00,780 --> 00:44:03,840
either physically can't drive or they're too old to drive

764
00:44:05,800 --> 00:44:07,720
allows them to have mobility

765
00:44:09,420 --> 00:44:11,100
as ride sharing services

766
00:44:12,080 --> 00:44:17,200
will start using it there is the potential to open up access for lots of people

767
00:44:17,200 --> 00:44:20,040
and yet ride sharing and autonomous vehicles often

768
00:44:20,040 --> 00:44:21,280
rely very heavily on

769
00:44:22,420 --> 00:44:26,100
mapping and so parts of the world are simply not mapped.

770
00:44:26,100 --> 00:44:28,260
And those places don't get access.

771
00:44:28,720 --> 00:44:30,960
And so there is an example of where

772
00:44:31,860 --> 00:44:35,220
technology, taken out of the disability context,

773
00:44:36,020 --> 00:44:38,900
but something that you could characterize

774
00:44:39,640 --> 00:44:41,000
at a very basic level

775
00:44:41,000 --> 00:44:42,800
as accessibility technology

776
00:44:45,660 --> 00:44:50,460
is itself going to potentially reproduce the structural inequalities

777
00:44:50,460 --> 00:44:52,520
that places like the favelas in Brazil

778
00:44:53,320 --> 00:44:56,360
are very heavily populated but are not mapped

779
00:44:56,360 --> 00:44:57,840
will not have access to these technologies.

780
00:44:58,480 --> 00:45:02,640
I'm not quite sure that answers your question about lagginess

781
00:45:05,260 --> 00:45:10,220
But there are just some bigger questions to me about technology in general

782
00:45:10,480 --> 00:45:13,680
and how that's reproducing these inequalities

783
00:45:15,280 --> 00:45:18,160
and I think it does raise these questions of

784
00:45:18,160 --> 00:45:20,120
you know, from a lagginess perspective

785
00:45:23,160 --> 00:45:26,040
that we have to sort of think of these things

786
00:45:26,040 --> 00:45:26,960
in their broader context and not

787
00:45:27,400 --> 00:45:29,400
just in a disability context.

788
00:45:30,980 --> 00:45:37,300
I'll just say something very briefly because then I want to make sure we have time for questions

789
00:45:38,260 --> 00:45:40,020
but just talking about lag

790
00:45:40,060 --> 00:45:43,580
and delay and whether that's a negative or a positive thing

791
00:45:44,840 --> 00:45:46,700
or an inevitable thing

792
00:45:47,140 --> 00:45:48,600
but I immediately thought of when you brought up

793
00:45:48,600 --> 00:45:52,900
you know the relational, or the sort of act of access, it is a process

794
00:45:52,900 --> 00:45:53,960
and not just a product.

795
00:45:53,960 --> 00:45:56,660
Thinking about with speech generating devices

796
00:45:56,660 --> 00:45:59,220
that it can take a while to create a message

797
00:45:59,220 --> 00:46:01,460
for it to then be output for somebody to say.

798
00:46:03,160 --> 00:46:06,920
The fluidity with which one might be able to potentially

799
00:46:08,500 --> 00:46:10,580
depending on what kind of motor

800
00:46:10,580 --> 00:46:12,440
impairment they might or might not have

801
00:46:12,440 --> 00:46:16,240
the patience that is required for a conversation partner

802
00:46:16,240 --> 00:46:19,920
even if you've got a technology that works well, it's top of the line, it's fully charged,

803
00:46:19,920 --> 00:46:21,180
that's a whole other thing

804
00:46:22,200 --> 00:46:25,320
can't talk if the thing doesn't have any juice.

805
00:46:25,320 --> 00:46:30,060
that the patience that is required of somebody else to follow a pace of conversation

806
00:46:30,700 --> 00:46:35,500
that might not be that one that they themselves enact or are use to having with another person.

807
00:46:38,760 --> 00:46:44,300
So that process, that patience, and that is something that is learned and something that

808
00:46:44,480 --> 00:46:46,460
somebody who doesn't have a speech disability would have to be able to become

809
00:46:46,620 --> 00:46:47,860
better at equiped at

810
00:46:47,860 --> 00:46:50,960
So think about the kinds of personal, social and cultural

811
00:46:51,180 --> 00:46:54,140
equipment that is needed for participation

812
00:46:54,140 --> 00:46:55,920
and that gets sort of like added to the

813
00:46:55,920 --> 00:46:59,520
list here just thinking about temporality in that way.

814
00:47:24,760 --> 00:47:26,520
It's just a small comment.

815
00:47:27,820 --> 00:47:30,060
I'm from Columbia.

816
00:47:30,060 --> 00:47:36,360
We don't have that many resources so we have to come up with creative solutions.

817
00:47:36,360 --> 00:47:40,840
The main problem with these kinds of issues is the economies of scale.

818
00:47:40,840 --> 00:47:45,260
As the population is not big, the market is not providing solutions for them.

819
00:47:45,980 --> 00:47:48,620
So for example in the case of deaf people...

820
00:47:50,560 --> 00:47:52,480
we create this relay center

821
00:47:52,480 --> 00:47:53,660
with sign language.

822
00:47:56,820 --> 00:47:59,780
So a person who is deaf could connect to an app

823
00:48:03,060 --> 00:48:06,820
and this remote person can translate from sign language

824
00:48:07,120 --> 00:48:09,760
so the deaf person can present an exam or

825
00:48:09,760 --> 00:48:13,740
have a consultation with a doctor or rely any kind of communication

826
00:48:13,740 --> 00:48:16,940
so this is one example of a solution to economies of scale.

827
00:48:17,440 --> 00:48:21,200
The other is we buy a country license for a screen reader.

828
00:48:25,500 --> 00:48:28,380
So one license is, I think, $1000 per person

829
00:48:29,060 --> 00:48:29,620
per year

830
00:48:29,620 --> 00:48:34,380
but if you buy a country license where it's less than $1 per person, per year

831
00:48:35,860 --> 00:48:37,540
or per computer, per year

832
00:48:40,820 --> 00:48:44,180
We buy thousands of thousands of licenses so we can

833
00:48:44,180 --> 00:48:46,480
install a license in every internet cafe

834
00:48:46,480 --> 00:48:47,780
in every school, for example.

835
00:48:49,660 --> 00:48:52,540
People are not paying because it's so cheap

836
00:48:56,080 --> 00:48:59,680
to charge for, so for example, the school pays a little

837
00:48:59,680 --> 00:49:02,160
and we gather all this money and buy a country license,

838
00:49:02,160 --> 00:49:05,940
which is tremendously cheaper than paying individually.

839
00:49:13,000 --> 00:49:17,960
I hadn't heard about country licenses. That's really fascinating, I want to know more.

840
00:49:20,320 --> 00:49:22,960
But in terms of scale, we may think about

841
00:49:22,960 --> 00:49:26,440
the sort of things that Ryan brought up with mainstreaming as being one

842
00:49:26,440 --> 00:49:30,460
way in which mainstream technologies are taking on assistive functions

843
00:49:30,800 --> 00:49:33,600
which enables a different kind of scaling

844
00:49:33,600 --> 00:49:36,380
When we are talking about assistive technologies

845
00:49:37,320 --> 00:49:39,080
that are developed as such

846
00:49:39,080 --> 00:49:43,780
they're often very expensive because there's a small market and a lot of research that goes into them.

847
00:49:46,520 --> 00:49:49,640
When those can be deployed in consumer devices

848
00:49:49,780 --> 00:49:52,420
some of those costs go down but as I think

849
00:49:52,580 --> 00:49:56,260
Ryan indicated sometimes oversight goes down as well.

850
00:49:56,260 --> 00:49:59,080
You don't have a medical professional adjusting the hearing aids

851
00:49:59,580 --> 00:50:02,940
I've been doing some research on emergency lately

852
00:50:02,940 --> 00:50:06,860
and you don't really have very good connections to 911 when

853
00:50:06,860 --> 00:50:08,580
you're relying on an app to dial it for you.

854
00:50:09,620 --> 00:50:12,500
So there are ways in which that is changing.

855
00:50:17,000 --> 00:50:20,440
I just had a question about the differences between

856
00:50:20,980 --> 00:50:22,740
adults and kids

857
00:50:24,180 --> 00:50:26,000
and particularly I think that there is often

858
00:50:26,040 --> 00:50:30,440
you know, talking about voice and voiceless, you know, many times

859
00:50:33,780 --> 00:50:35,060
kids are voiceless

860
00:50:36,040 --> 00:50:37,880
either simply because they

861
00:50:37,880 --> 00:50:40,000
aren't at the emotional or intellectual

862
00:50:41,100 --> 00:50:44,220
place where they can talk about what is going on

863
00:50:44,220 --> 00:50:46,860
or legally their parents speak for them

864
00:50:48,460 --> 00:50:51,660
and I know from my personal experience when I was

865
00:50:52,880 --> 00:50:57,120
5 or 6 the last thing I wanted to be doing was wearing hearing aids

866
00:50:58,780 --> 00:51:01,900
and I didn't want people to ask me about them and

867
00:51:01,900 --> 00:51:04,700
if it was my choice I would have just taken them out

868
00:51:04,700 --> 00:51:06,380
but luckily it wasn't my choice

869
00:51:06,540 --> 00:51:09,500
And so I was wondering if you could talk about

870
00:51:09,500 --> 00:51:12,440
some of the differences that you guys have seen

871
00:51:14,020 --> 00:51:17,300
in particular, you quoted some parents talking,

872
00:51:17,740 --> 00:51:19,320
about their experiences

873
00:51:20,700 --> 00:51:25,420
I'd be interested to hear about how these issues of voice and voiceless

874
00:51:25,860 --> 00:51:29,700
and access are different or different challenges emerge

875
00:51:29,700 --> 00:51:32,440
when you're dealing with adults versus kids

876
00:51:37,560 --> 00:51:39,880
I've worked primarily with adults

877
00:51:39,880 --> 00:51:43,040
and in part that's because when we are looking at

878
00:51:44,260 --> 00:51:48,180
disability spaces there is a lot of attention often to K-12

879
00:51:49,820 --> 00:51:54,060
education and to particularly what can be done to help children

880
00:51:54,640 --> 00:51:59,040
and there is often a drop off of when those children become adults.

881
00:51:59,180 --> 00:52:03,340
So by looking at online spaces where people with disabilities

882
00:52:03,900 --> 00:52:08,700
were engaging with one another and creating disability culture I think

883
00:52:09,340 --> 00:52:13,900
I get an interesting sort of perspective on what happens after that.

884
00:52:13,900 --> 00:52:18,580
Right in that sort of less structured space but obviously for research on kids

885
00:52:18,580 --> 00:52:24,280
I think the kid focus is particularly just from my expertise and background more than anything

886
00:52:25,100 --> 00:52:27,660
Even then, thirteen tends to become my cutoff.

887
00:52:27,660 --> 00:52:30,660
Fourteen in the US, you're meant to at least federally, have a mandate

888
00:52:30,840 --> 00:52:33,360
mandate to talk about transition to adulthood

889
00:52:33,560 --> 00:52:36,520
and that's where I sort of stop, even though

890
00:52:36,760 --> 00:52:39,400
you can be like 30 and really be into Elmo

891
00:52:39,400 --> 00:52:43,260
and in my first book I talk in "Digital Youth with Disabilities" talk about

892
00:52:43,900 --> 00:52:48,460
age appropriateness and the fluidity with which radical spaces can

893
00:52:48,460 --> 00:52:52,360
potentially be created outside of related to interested or related to

894
00:52:52,360 --> 00:52:56,240
different cultural spaces like theater performances that

895
00:52:57,880 --> 00:53:04,120
have sensory inclusivity, sort of mixed aged, mixed abilities of all different sort of kinds

896
00:53:04,120 --> 00:53:07,060
and I think that with the book a lot of the research

897
00:53:08,880 --> 00:53:10,160
in terms of the kids

898
00:53:11,160 --> 00:53:13,640
there are the parents that are quoted

899
00:53:14,380 --> 00:53:17,980
In the book there are a lot of descriptors of behaviour

900
00:53:17,980 --> 00:53:20,900
and of interactions with kids and other individuals

901
00:53:23,100 --> 00:53:26,220
I did not have the skill to interview some of the

902
00:53:29,540 --> 00:53:32,020
kids in terms of their capacity to use

903
00:53:32,020 --> 00:53:35,480
...the whole point was that they didn't have reliable access to communication

904
00:53:37,240 --> 00:53:43,160
and so the challenges of then doing that work outside of triangulating different sort of

905
00:53:43,600 --> 00:53:48,960
behaviours and different kinds of expressions, vocalizations or excitements

906
00:53:49,620 --> 00:53:53,220
in kinds of spaces. I would say for my next book project

907
00:53:53,220 --> 00:53:56,060
which is focused on the experiences of autistic youth

908
00:53:56,200 --> 00:53:58,120
growing up in the digital age

909
00:53:58,820 --> 00:54:01,880
and different kinds of ways that communication happens

910
00:54:02,560 --> 00:54:06,000
I'm grappling with that right now in terms of in interviews that I'm doing

911
00:54:07,620 --> 00:54:12,820
directly with kids, the ways that I talk with them about their media practices

912
00:54:12,820 --> 00:54:14,520
Again, some of that is oral and some of that is not

913
00:54:14,520 --> 00:54:16,540
and so part of that is sometimes the challenge of

914
00:54:16,540 --> 00:54:18,540
presenting fieldwork to an audience

915
00:54:19,120 --> 00:54:20,880
and the legibility of that

916
00:54:21,220 --> 00:54:23,380
as opposed to sort of just having

917
00:54:24,000 --> 00:54:26,400
a video or another kind of recording

918
00:54:26,400 --> 00:54:28,600
so that kind of gets at our methods and

919
00:54:30,700 --> 00:54:31,980
the ways in which we

920
00:54:32,260 --> 00:54:34,020
make our research visible

921
00:54:34,020 --> 00:54:36,340
and the ways in which certain kinds of visibilities

922
00:54:38,760 --> 00:54:40,920
can unintentionally privilege

923
00:54:40,920 --> 00:54:42,980
or reflect certain ways in which the research was or was not conducted.

924
00:54:48,980 --> 00:54:52,900
Hi, I have one comment about giving voice to the voiceless.

925
00:54:52,900 --> 00:54:55,160
I really liked the point about how voiceless

926
00:54:55,860 --> 00:55:00,280
is seen as a means for agency and self presentation.

927
00:55:00,280 --> 00:55:02,180
I was just thinking about if you change the headline to something different

928
00:55:02,220 --> 00:55:04,940
instead of giving voice to the voiceless

929
00:55:06,100 --> 00:55:09,300
to something like "Listen to the Unlistenable"

930
00:55:11,220 --> 00:55:13,700
it'll be a totally different focus on

931
00:55:14,960 --> 00:55:18,400
instead of on the person who needs to be given a voice

932
00:55:18,960 --> 00:55:22,080
it will be on behalf of us to train our listening capacity.

933
00:55:22,380 --> 00:55:25,740
So I don't know whether you've thought about that.

934
00:55:25,740 --> 00:55:27,520
Yeah, so listening and speaking

935
00:55:27,520 --> 00:55:31,160
and the dynamics between those things are something that I talk about more in the book

936
00:55:34,020 --> 00:55:38,660
and that gets a little bit to... There's a phrase I really, really love...

937
00:55:38,660 --> 00:55:40,060
A media justice scholar Tanya Draya talks about. The partial promise of voice

938
00:55:40,080 --> 00:55:43,280
So voice's incompletion, the partiality of it,

939
00:55:44,220 --> 00:55:48,700
to fully say that we have any kind of grasp or pin-downableness of it

940
00:55:49,580 --> 00:55:52,220
because that understanding of respect

941
00:55:53,560 --> 00:55:56,920
of a message being acted on and a promise being kept

942
00:55:56,940 --> 00:55:59,340
and that's partly in larger public sphere discussions

943
00:56:01,280 --> 00:56:03,840
but I think that point about listening

944
00:56:03,840 --> 00:56:05,280
whether one is able to be listened to or not...

945
00:56:05,900 --> 00:56:09,820
again that's a... Begin to think about that in a biological

946
00:56:10,140 --> 00:56:16,780
individual level, a social level, a political... You know... what the mechanisms are for feedback

947
00:56:16,780 --> 00:56:21,080
But also some of that can sort of reinforce who's in power in the first place.

948
00:56:23,760 --> 00:56:27,040
And in what ways can that still enforce an us/them

949
00:56:29,700 --> 00:56:34,420
An essentializing idea of having and not having of giving and not having.

950
00:56:38,980 --> 00:56:41,380
Hi, I have a comment then a question.

951
00:56:41,380 --> 00:56:43,680
I had the great pleasure and I will say some humility,

952
00:56:43,680 --> 00:56:45,060
about ten years ago

953
00:56:45,160 --> 00:56:47,960
I was teaching at Northeastern for adults

954
00:56:47,960 --> 00:56:50,620
and one of my students was a 74 year old blind man

955
00:56:50,680 --> 00:56:52,200
who lost his sight at 32

956
00:56:52,660 --> 00:56:54,900
and I learned the day in the life of

957
00:56:55,740 --> 00:56:59,340
someone who is disable and I had to rearrange my entire

958
00:57:01,580 --> 00:57:03,900
how I was going to structure an exam

959
00:57:03,900 --> 00:57:06,380
because we were in a computer class room and he had to go in a special room

960
00:57:06,540 --> 00:57:10,220
and if they didn't have the jaws then I would have to work

961
00:57:10,220 --> 00:57:14,480
with the Northeastern disability office to have someone come and have a reader

962
00:57:14,660 --> 00:57:18,900
read the exam to him and I learned something at the MA disability

963
00:57:20,320 --> 00:57:26,000
I just say, "oh just go to the bookstore and go and get volume 6 of the book for the class"

964
00:57:28,000 --> 00:57:31,120
and the one they had for the brail was version 3.

965
00:57:31,260 --> 00:57:33,660
Things that we just take for granted.

966
00:57:33,660 --> 00:57:35,140
It's just very humbling

967
00:57:35,140 --> 00:57:37,420
Another time I was at an event where

968
00:57:39,180 --> 00:57:41,500
there was a company who had an event

969
00:57:41,500 --> 00:57:44,440
at the faculty club where they were talking and saying that many

970
00:57:44,440 --> 00:57:46,400
times when they have events here

971
00:57:46,400 --> 00:57:48,680
or classes they have closed captioning

972
00:57:48,900 --> 00:57:52,100
and they said that many times foreign students,

973
00:57:52,400 --> 00:57:55,120
to help them learn English, are using it.

974
00:57:55,120 --> 00:57:58,620
So that's like the number one reason in addition to disability.

975
00:57:59,460 --> 00:58:01,140
So my question here is...

976
00:58:01,140 --> 00:58:02,460
We're in an area where we have so many start-ups

977
00:58:02,460 --> 00:58:06,460
and just like until recently, cyber security and writing secure code is

978
00:58:08,300 --> 00:58:13,900
an after thought... disability for many places is like, "yeah, yeah, whatever..."

979
00:58:15,800 --> 00:58:19,640
Is there anything that can be done to teach the CS students

980
00:58:21,420 --> 00:58:25,980
that are coming to our courses, at MIT, here at Harvard, the people who

981
00:58:25,980 --> 00:58:28,280
before they start their careers, to incorporate it into

982
00:58:31,420 --> 00:58:35,100
design so it's not... So let's take it and make it part of

983
00:58:35,540 --> 00:58:37,300
how you learn how to create

984
00:58:37,300 --> 00:58:39,940
So you will not have these credible disparities

985
00:58:41,740 --> 00:58:43,020
in accessibility.

986
00:58:43,960 --> 00:58:45,640
One thing I would say is to

987
00:58:46,980 --> 00:58:50,980
read histories of people with disabilities as actors in the

988
00:58:50,980 --> 00:58:52,420
history of the development of computing.

989
00:58:53,100 --> 00:58:56,460
So the idea that it is more like you're not adding on

990
00:58:56,460 --> 00:59:02,140
disability... Like, the recovery of people with disabilities in computing history or engineering history

991
00:59:04,080 --> 00:59:07,280
is really central to that idea of not developing

992
00:59:07,280 --> 00:59:08,560
a sort of charity model

993
00:59:09,040 --> 00:59:11,840
of disability pedagogy in a field like CS.

994
00:59:14,560 --> 00:59:16,000
I'll just add to that.

995
00:59:16,000 --> 00:59:17,960
I've done some work on how web accessibility

996
00:59:18,060 --> 00:59:22,140
was explicitly an afterthought in teaching web development

997
00:59:22,140 --> 00:59:22,980
for many, many years.

998
00:59:22,980 --> 00:59:25,860
In the sense that it would be the last chapter of the book

999
00:59:25,860 --> 00:59:29,240
Once you've learnt to do everything else, maybe you'll look at this

1000
00:59:29,420 --> 00:59:30,940
but you probably won't

1001
00:59:30,940 --> 00:59:35,480
And that's something that's borne out of a lot of computer studies curriculum.

1002
00:59:36,020 --> 00:59:38,580
They don't have courses on accessibility

1003
00:59:38,580 --> 00:59:43,460
and basic lessons don't incorporate it as something that you do as part of a process.

1004
00:59:43,760 --> 00:59:48,400
The International Association of Accessibility Professionals is a

1005
00:59:48,400 --> 00:59:51,200
young organization maybe four or five years old

1006
00:59:52,260 --> 00:59:56,820
that's explicitly attempting to address that by making some sort of

1007
00:59:58,100 --> 01:00:00,500
best practices for CS education and

1008
01:00:00,500 --> 01:00:02,700
offering some certifications for people who have

1009
01:00:03,000 --> 01:00:08,120
actual training in accessibility to use once they go out into the job market.

1010
01:00:10,640 --> 01:00:14,400
Then of course there is a whole world of universal design

1011
01:00:14,400 --> 01:00:16,120
and design for disability and design literatures

1012
01:00:17,580 --> 01:00:18,700
focused on how to

1013
01:00:19,620 --> 01:00:22,660
incorporate diverse users at an early stage.

1014
01:00:25,540 --> 01:00:28,980
I was just going to say that I am somewhat optimistic

1015
01:00:30,120 --> 01:00:31,640
in this sense right now

1016
01:00:32,460 --> 01:00:34,860
because I think that when you look at

1017
01:00:35,760 --> 01:00:38,400
things like wearable technologies and

1018
01:00:39,400 --> 01:00:40,760
there's so much more

1019
01:00:40,860 --> 01:00:43,100
focus right now on the mainstream

1020
01:00:43,100 --> 01:00:45,760
and I think this gets back to this kind of convergence point

1021
01:00:45,760 --> 01:00:47,940
there is so much more focus right now on

1022
01:00:47,940 --> 01:00:50,660
human-machine interaction and artificial intelligence

1023
01:00:50,660 --> 01:00:52,220
and a lot of the technologies

1024
01:00:52,260 --> 01:00:54,020
that are necessary to make

1025
01:00:56,140 --> 01:00:57,340
wearables better

1026
01:00:58,100 --> 01:01:02,820
to make augmented reality better, to make autonomous vehicles better

1027
01:01:03,820 --> 01:01:06,300
the improvements that have been made

1028
01:01:07,920 --> 01:01:11,840
over the last several years in computer vision technology

1029
01:01:13,800 --> 01:01:17,560
all of those things will help on this lagginess question

1030
01:01:18,420 --> 01:01:23,780
I think it's that as more technology and these start-ups are thinking more about

1031
01:01:23,780 --> 01:01:26,360
how machines interact with the physical world

1032
01:01:26,360 --> 01:01:28,800
they're solving some of these problems

1033
01:01:28,880 --> 01:01:31,280
that maybe have traditionally been

1034
01:01:31,440 --> 01:01:33,920
have been the after thought problems

1035
01:01:34,900 --> 01:01:38,100
and they're not approaching it in the mindset of

1036
01:01:38,100 --> 01:01:40,120
how do we solve problems with people with disabilities

1037
01:01:41,140 --> 01:01:43,380
but I think that the applications

1038
01:01:43,380 --> 01:01:45,160
are getting closer and closer

1039
01:01:45,540 --> 01:01:48,180
so that it's not such a leap to figure out

1040
01:01:48,180 --> 01:01:50,180
oh, we designed this thing, now we have to

1041
01:01:50,180 --> 01:01:53,280
figure out how to apply it in a whole new context

1042
01:01:53,680 --> 01:01:56,960
but it's actually like, oh, we now have something

1043
01:01:57,140 --> 01:02:00,180
that can identify what's going on in this room

1044
01:02:00,180 --> 01:02:03,020
because we need it for our artificial intelligence technology

1045
01:02:03,020 --> 01:02:05,760
and that makes it super easy to design something for someone

1046
01:02:05,760 --> 01:02:07,960
with a visual impairment. So, I'm optimistic.

1047
01:02:10,280 --> 01:02:13,560
So just a quick comment on that last bit, there is an

1048
01:02:13,560 --> 01:02:16,940
industrial thing called Teach Access

1049
01:02:18,120 --> 01:02:21,400
it's a consortium of a number of the big companies

1050
01:02:22,580 --> 01:02:25,220
are trying to put together curricula to

1051
01:02:25,220 --> 01:02:26,980
distribute throughout a bunch of universities for specifically integrating

1052
01:02:27,240 --> 01:02:28,920
it into the CS curriculum.

1053
01:02:28,920 --> 01:02:31,620
There's a lot of trouble there because a lot of the

1054
01:02:31,620 --> 01:02:34,060
industries are trying to hire people and

1055
01:02:34,060 --> 01:02:35,620
nobody knows anything about it

1056
01:02:35,620 --> 01:02:38,000
and so this is actually a pull from industry to try and

1057
01:02:38,620 --> 01:02:40,860
be able to key that up a little bit.

1058
01:02:42,540 --> 01:02:44,460
So it's something to look at.

1059
01:02:44,460 --> 01:02:45,380
I just had a question. A lot of the

1060
01:02:45,640 --> 01:02:48,520
regulatory issues and the policy issues in

1061
01:02:48,520 --> 01:02:50,520
accessibility have to do with

1062
01:02:51,020 --> 01:02:55,580
things around either livelihoods or access to government services

1063
01:02:55,580 --> 01:02:59,680
these things that are really very instrumental in getting things done in your life.

1064
01:03:00,100 --> 01:03:02,980
I'm wonder if you could speak a little bit to

1065
01:03:03,240 --> 01:03:07,800
issues around entertainment or just sociality of just interacting

1066
01:03:07,800 --> 01:03:13,280
because as much more of our lives become mediated the access of these things become much more critical

1067
01:03:13,880 --> 01:03:14,840
to just our lives.

1068
01:03:16,220 --> 01:03:19,900
And I don't see a lot of discussion about that in a lot of disability discussions.

1069
01:03:22,200 --> 01:03:26,680
I think the place you see the most discussion of that sort of thing is

1070
01:03:27,800 --> 01:03:28,840
in captioning.

1071
01:03:28,840 --> 01:03:33,360
Particularly, in the past several years as Netflix captioned its content

1072
01:03:34,140 --> 01:03:36,940
both the activism around that and then the

1073
01:03:39,860 --> 01:03:42,660
21st Century Video and Communication Act

1074
01:03:42,860 --> 01:03:46,700
took some steps towards prioritizing that kind of access

1075
01:03:46,700 --> 01:03:49,800
But I think it's a really intesting question to think

1076
01:03:49,800 --> 01:03:52,120
about content and what we're gaining access to

1077
01:03:54,600 --> 01:03:59,160
and making sure that access to video games and access to pornography

1078
01:03:59,220 --> 01:04:04,420
are still kinds of access, and people with disabilities are not less entitled

1079
01:04:05,480 --> 01:04:09,800
to things that we think are morally dubious than are other people.

1080
01:04:09,800 --> 01:04:14,700
So there's certainly some tension there, right? Because government doesn't want to get into

1081
01:04:16,420 --> 01:04:19,940
that if they can avoid it. But I'm encouraged because

1082
01:04:20,220 --> 01:04:23,580
I see that that's also happening in informal ways.

1083
01:04:26,260 --> 01:04:29,060
Major league baseball did what's called a

1084
01:04:29,060 --> 01:04:30,840
structured negotiation where instead of a lawsuit

1085
01:04:30,840 --> 01:04:33,760
they worked with disabled community memebers

1086
01:04:34,480 --> 01:04:38,800
to make websites and streaming baseball games more accessible.

1087
01:04:41,840 --> 01:04:47,280
So that's something where the mandate for MLB to be accessible is not really there

1088
01:04:48,160 --> 01:04:51,440
but through some processes of introductions and collaboration

1089
01:04:52,900 --> 01:04:56,740
you can actually get to places where that content is being

1090
01:05:00,460 --> 01:05:03,420
addressed but it's very much not from the W3C.

1091
01:05:04,840 --> 01:05:07,640
There's a chapter in the book that's about

1092
01:05:07,960 --> 01:05:11,880
centering on... The question is like 'what is an iPad for?'

1093
01:05:14,660 --> 01:05:19,300
There were these real tensions around whether an iPad was for that app exclusively

1094
01:05:20,000 --> 01:05:23,200
or whether it was also for all of the other things

1095
01:05:23,200 --> 01:05:25,640
that any of the other things that a person might use it for

1096
01:05:26,240 --> 01:05:28,800
and a lot of things that were related to

1097
01:05:30,040 --> 01:05:33,560
issues around taste, related to issues of ownership,

1098
01:05:34,360 --> 01:05:39,160
the idea of whether you had multiple different pieces of those hardware

1099
01:05:39,160 --> 01:05:42,940
to delineate and make distinctions between what each of those things are for

1100
01:05:42,940 --> 01:05:46,860
but for me the real lightening strike in that was I was doing an observation

1101
01:05:47,600 --> 01:05:53,120
and the speech pathologist I was with had very negative things to say about YouTube

1102
01:05:53,120 --> 01:05:56,500
even though it was clearly something that the kid enjoyed

1103
01:05:58,260 --> 01:06:02,660
that motivated them to use this app in the first place to communicate

1104
01:06:03,380 --> 01:06:09,300
but there were lots of values about kids and their iPads and their YouTubes and are shut down

1105
01:06:09,300 --> 01:06:12,080
and the ways that that particularly extra marginalized

1106
01:06:12,240 --> 01:06:17,520
families who maybe didn't have access to, or the ability to mobilize resources

1107
01:06:17,520 --> 01:06:19,700
I want to also phrase it as that way

1108
01:06:19,960 --> 01:06:24,920
around English language, mobilize resources around community members

1109
01:06:24,920 --> 01:06:27,260
who had other kinds of access to other kinds of resources

1110
01:06:27,260 --> 01:06:31,640
social capital, the cultural capital to push bak against that person

1111
01:06:32,700 --> 01:06:33,340
in any way

1112
01:06:35,080 --> 01:06:41,800
Especially because an iPad is designed to be a consumption technology not necessarily for creation

1113
01:06:41,920 --> 01:06:43,920
and somewhat for circulation

1114
01:06:43,920 --> 01:06:47,320
just thinking about the people wanting to take advantage of

1115
01:06:47,320 --> 01:06:50,920
all of these things that can be done but some of the professional

1116
01:06:52,980 --> 01:06:57,380
push backs around expertise and it's a mainstream technology but

1117
01:06:57,380 --> 01:07:02,080
it entered the home through the teachings of somebody with a professionalization

1118
01:07:02,700 --> 01:07:05,660
and certain sort of things attached to that.

1119
01:07:05,760 --> 01:07:07,360
More of that in the book.

1120
01:07:08,040 --> 01:07:15,040
Okay thanks every, again there are books. I'll just say there are books for purchase at the back of the room

1121
01:07:15,820 --> 01:07:20,460
and thank you so much for coming out. Liz and Meryl and Ryan will be here.

1122
01:07:20,460 --> 01:07:22,780
A round of applause for our guests. [Audience applauses].