Harvard Law School Library Book Talk | Accessible Technology and the Developing World

so we're at 12 32 so i'm gonna get started and folks will join us as they're able to so good afternoon everyone hello i'm jocelyn kennedy i'm the executive director of the harvard law school library i'm so delighted to have to welcome you all to the first book talk of this year of the 21 22 academic year so welcome our talk is being recorded as you heard when you entered the room and it will be posted um in about a week or two on our youtube channel i'd love to thank take a moment to thank dean manning for his generous support of these talks and a really big thank you to our team maya bergamosco rachel parker debbie ginsberg and theresa matt for putting together this series we welcome your questions for our panelists and invite you to use the q a feature throughout the talk we'll reserve some time at the end of um of our conversation with our panel to engage with your questions i mean please visit your local library and your local bookseller in person or online for a copy of today's book accessible technology and the developing world it's my pleasure to introduce our co-editors and our discussants today dr michael ashley stein one of our editors is the co-founder and executive director of the harvard law school project on disability and a visiting professor at harvard law school since 2005. he's one of the world's leading experts on disability law and policy he's participated in the drafting of the un convention on the rights of persons with disabilities works with disabled people's organizations and ngos around the world and actively consults with and advises governments ngos and igos on their disability laws and policy dr jonathan lazar is also one of our editors he's a professor in the college of information studies at the university of maryland he frequently serves as an advisor to us government agencies provides testimony at the federal and state levels and multiple u.s federal regulations cite his research he teaches courses on human computer interaction user-centered design accessibility and legal research methods dr lazar is the next director of the trace research and develop development center um starting in six days uh it is the nation's oldest research center on technology and disability and joining us today as our panelists are professor amy landers of drexel university's thomas r klein school of law she's the director of the intellectual property law program before joining the client school of law faculty in 2014 she was a distinguished professor of law and director of the ip law concentration at mcgeorge school of law prior to joining academia professor landers was a partner at orrick harrington and sutcliffe where she specialized in ip litigation anti-trust fraud trade secret and trademark cases eat the is a social development specialist with the social sustainability and inclusion global practice of the world bank she provides technical assistance and operational support and operationalizing disability inclusion across many sectors and regions her areas of focus include digital inclusion economic empowerment and inclusive education prior to joining the world bank she served as director of international programs and senior researcher at the burton block institute at syracuse university was a senior research analyst at the global initiative for inclusive icts and was a research coordinator for the global partnership for disability and development dr raja kushner is the director of the information technology program in the department of science technology and mathematics at gallaudet university his research interests encompass the fields of accessible computing and accessibility intellectual property law with the goal of improving information access for deaf and hard of hearing individuals in the accessible commute computing field he investigates information access disparities between hearing and deaf communities and in the accessibility ip law field he advocates for updates in accessibility and ip law to incorporate accessible computing advances such as automatic captioning and subtitling and our asl interpreter today is patty lejeune all of our speakers are also library champions so for that we are doubly grateful to have them with us today and with that i turn it over to you professor stein to get us started thank you ever so much it's a joy to to be here virtually or not um and speaking of libraries my my thank you list begins with the harvard law school library which is the greatest law library in the world staffed by fantastic people who make my life better and easier every day and enable scholarship that i and my colleagues do you're wonderful and we're grateful to you on behalf of professor lazar we also would like to thank the radcliff institute for advanced study who sponsored a workshop at which we vetted many of these ideas and worked them through and met with many of the authors we'd like to thank our editors and publishers over at oxford university press and of course we would like to thank the wonderful panelists who are here today but as well the wonderful authors who are not here with us today but who contributed from all over the world to this volume thank you ever so much we're grateful to you finally to jonathan you're always a pleasure to work with um and we will be sharing the opening today i'll talk a little bit about what motivated us to to put together this book and jonathan will talk a little bit about the content of the book so basically the story of intellect of information and communication technology ict and people with disabilities mirrors that dialogue that's often put forward about development generally that innovations come from the global north from the developed part of the globe down and flow down to the global south the developing part of the world that it's done either in beneficence or in good will and that it's a one-way flow and it's a one-way flow and very little is paid attention to what happens in the developing world how do countries that are resource constrained come up with their own innovations what do they do about ict and other things relating to people with with disabilities so in other words the typical dialogue is very much a colonial one um you know one one that is imperialistic in in flavor and jonathan and i having worked in the area and having had wonderful colleagues from all over the globe many of whom are featured in this in this volume said well wait a minute that's not the whole story and in fact the global south because they cannot afford to waste money on innovations because they often cannot afford to utilize money on the innovations that come from the global north with hefty price tags often will go and innovate on their own and come up with schemes that are ingenious intuitive inventive ones that are culturally appropriate resource appropriate and able to be used in their own venues and so what we did with this book was we thought about how we could involve storytelling about what's going on in the larger world rather than telling it through a global north kind of conduit there of course the other thing about ict and people with disabilities is that we have all been greatly enabled by the un convention on the rights of persons with disabilities the crpd we'll call it both its articles on freedom of information and accessibility and international cooperation and by the marrakesh treaty to facilitate access to published works for persons who are blind visually impaired or otherwise printed disabled that will just refer to as the marrakesh treaty these two international human rights treaties in addition to the sustainable development goals are aimed at reducing poverty and inequality access to ict freedom of information and communication and all together supported by things like g3 ict the un's global initiative and other endeavors such as habitat which looks at accessible cities and smart cities are driving change across the globe we did however come up with some conclusions cutting across some of the the issues in the book one is that the technical infrastructures and developing areas are often very different from technical infrastructures in the developed world that's true that developing areas may not have existing educational and advocacy infrastructures that the legal frameworks that exist in developed countries often do not exist or are or are on their way to existing in the global south that design methods used for assistive technology and accessible technology are often designed with a global north mindset consider for example the hit that apple just took because the the powering device for its phones is now going to be synthesized in europe to one that it doesn't use its stock just reduced by four percent um consider that many of these innovations from the global north are much like other development innovations sponsored by the world bank and others they're expensive they come with certain parts and certain services and certain features and assume not only infrastructure that everyone should have the internet everyone should have a laptop but also assume that you can afford to buy the parts replacements and so on and so forth those without experience and development often assume that development only occurs in countries that are of low socioeconomic status and yet and yet one of our chapters actually looks at areas of of development and challenges within the global north finally we learn that data needs to be collected about technology accessibility and developing areas and you'll hear some of that from deep dna and you'll read if you choose to the book some of the chapters on the dr index put forward by the un g3 ict and we also pointed out that individuals often miss the connection between accessible technology and economic independence finally among the things that came across the book as far as cross-cutting issues is that technology and other innovations are often being pushed by the people themselves people with disabilities their allies innovators and others very often social entrepreneurs doing things for the greater good will come up with innovations and share them often for example piggybacking on patents which i know amy will speak about in a bit so this was a wonderful learning experience we encourage you to read the book we hope that you will enjoy today's panel and jonathan now it's over to you hi everyone good afternoon um thank you again to harvard law school library for this kind invitation as michael said thank you to all of our colleagues and contributors to the book um very excited to have this book it will be out in the next month and we're just very excited about what we're able to put together right because it's actually a very interesting but underrepresented and under discussed topic about technology accessibility in developing areas typically when you think about accessibility of digital technology the stakeholders you think of right you think of okay accessibility researchers you think of technology companies and you think well that's sometimes the legal framework as well you typically either think of the us federal government you know the canadian national or the provincial governments you think of the eu you think of the uk government when we switch to talking about developing areas and accessibility it's a completely different set of players a completely different set of stakeholders and a different set of constraints and different set of issues and so for instance when you read about accessibility typically in the us and northern europe you hear well okay bandwidth is not an issue in developing areas bandwidth is an issue right the infrastructures are just being built now for technology in some of these developing areas and so there's so many opportunities to kind of jump into the debate right and figure out how can we influence how can we inform these efforts now before an inaccessible infrastructure has been built in terms of the book we basically split it into a few different sections one section is just the foundational chapters about who are the stakeholders what is the data what is the playing field then we have the legal frameworks and then we have the applications so in terms of just the foundational chapters when we talk about developing areas and we talk about developing countries right the world bank obviously is a major player and dp is going to talk a little bit about the the role of the world bank um the international human rights framework right the legal frameworks um ngos like benin tech right which focuses i mean they're the basically the largest distributor in the world of books in fully accessible format and michael briefly mentioned g3ict and all these things i'm talking about we have chapters on each one of these but g3 ict we actually have three different chapters on so they are an advocacy group right founded as part of the un efforts to monitor and encourage digital accessibility around the world they have a lot of different efforts but the one that actually helps drive this topic so much is their dare index right it is a d-a-r-e digital accessibility um rights valuation index right and they actually collect data around the world in over 130 countries about progress towards digital accessibility you know while it may be measured in a lot of the developed countries in a lot of these developing areas there really isn't a good sense for instance what are the country commitments here are the three parts of the dare index the country commitments the capacity to implement and the actual outcomes in digital accessibility now if that sounds familiar from how we do other human rights measurement it actually is it's based on that so for instance one of the fascinating things you'd expect obviously uh that north america and northern europe would have relatively high rates of digital accessibility would you expect that uh central and south america would well actually it's really fascinating because right the four key languages the four most prominent languages in latin america right spanish portuguese french and english because there are countries that are developed countries that use all those languages some technologies are able to be ported over and so you see that for instance in contrast to east asia where there are so many different languages and so in some cases things have to be developed locally although that can be good because as michael mentioned innovation accessibility is innovation people often miss that trying to figure out how to make something more flexible to make it accessible that's innovation try and figure out how to do something with fewer resources that's innovation that's so the idea is that in these developing areas you have all these innovators right you have all these innovators who are trying to figure out how can we solve a problem how can we solve a problem with fewer resources so there's so much to learn from all these different areas so the first portion of the book again deals with uh foundational chapters foundational topics and all the different stakeholders another important one is the web accessibility initiatives right that's the organization based out of the world wide web consortium that creates technical standards such as the web content accessibility guidelines so if you've ever heard of those right those are the international technical standards that are used all around the world for figuring out how do we design an accessible website and there are other standards as well for for non-non-web technologies so that's the first section foundational chapters the second section is the legal framework and amy landers is going to talk a little bit about her work on ip law and patents in the book is also a chapter by michael stein and paul harper all about the marrakesh treaty and the marrakesh treaty is so helpful because it means that if you have right a a material that you've created in digital accessible format in one country you can typically transfer it to another country that is also a party to the treaty and these exceptions that exist in national laws the marrakesh treaty requires these exceptions to copyright laws just like we have in the u.s the um the

chaffey amendment to the copyright act so the second section deals with legal framework the third section of the book deals with applications and so when we talk about applications we're talking about how do we make sure that digital technology is accessible in for instance k-12 education we have a chapter on that how do we make sure that universities in developing areas support efforts towards digital accessibility we have a chapter about that applications such as ride sharing and that's a really big impact on people with disabilities in developing areas but again only if the ride sharing apps and the whole process is accessible things like payment there's accessible mobile banking and and raja kushal nagar is going to talk a bit about that as well so there's so many different things to think about when we think about how do we empower people with disabilities in developing areas one of the other interesting chapters in the book deals with ludic design designed for fun and it tells you about how we often have assumptions about accessibility and assumptions about developing areas that we don't even realize for instance in this chapter um and there's a chapter coming out of microsoft research india right the the chapter focuses on play and technology for play and basically the chapter describes how you know in a lot of developed areas we say we're going to build technology for fun we're going to build it for exploration we're going to build it to help people explore and learn and when it comes to developing areas you often get policies and mandates that say well our goal is we just have to figure out right how someone can use this at a functional level rather than an exploratory fund level or you see the difference um there's a chapter in a previous book that michael and i edited all about computer gaming and computer gaming and accessibility and is there a human right to computer gaming and at the beginning of the process i know michael was not sure right and we had a great discussion about that but what happens when computer gaming is used in education what happens when computer gaming is used for socialization if we say well computer gaming isn't important then that leads to a situation where people are being excluded and so that chapter about ludic design is how do we make sure that we're not only designing just for functional needs but that we are designing for the whole person that we are designing for fun that we are designing to make sure that people with disabilities can explore and that's really the the overall theme of the book it's about how do we take our assumptions from the global north turn them on their head how do we make sure that people in developing areas are the ones driving the development how do we make sure that we're using methods that are appropriate how do we make sure that we're focusing on applications that are appropriate how do we ensure that we are doing the right thing now when we have an opportunity to make sure that infrastructures are being built technologies are being built in an accessible way and how can we make sure that people with disabilities in the global south are empowered so i want to pass it along then to our panelists um to deep dee to amy and to um to raja and we're gonna start with deepti talking about the role of the world bank and her fantastic chapter deepti please thank you jonathan and let me start by thanking the harvard law school library for showcasing this book thank you jonathan and michael for embarking on this journey uh to bringing together analysis and critical thinking on the application of digital technologies for persons with disabilities in the developing world i am thrilled to have the opportunity to talk about this chapter co-authored with charlotte maclaine mclappo the world bank's global disability advisor on addressing the drivers for digitally enabled disability inclusive development digital technologies are today impacting almost every sector of development education health economic participation access to finance public services citizen engagement what is exciting about this um both michael and jonathan have alluded to this is that we know that digital technology when accessible can be catalytic for accessing markets spaces and services for persons with disabilities there are several examples of positive impact and success stories that we present in the chapter you know in education there are examples of accessible digital books and learning content for students with print disabilities low-cost e-readers mobile apps to offer sign language instruction technology is increasingly pervasive in the world of work and the growing share of online work in the gig economy opens many doors for income generation the list goes on um digital banking mobile payments mhealth tele rehab services platforms for active civic engagement disaster response management portals and so on there is also a lot of enthusiasm about how new technologies based on machine learning artificial intelligence internet of things are revolutionizing access for persons with disabilities through smart cities and smart systems however the issue is that while there are many examples of success these are mostly small scale examples and often stay at pilot stage when we try to look for large scale applications of accessible technology in these domains we are confronted with fragmented services and several gaps in the ecosystem over the last year and a half kovin 19 served as the real world stress test of how technology fared in ensuring continuity of services for persons with disabilities and the reflections that we represent in our chapter were evident in the insights and stories that emerge there continues to be a wide gap between the potential of technology and its large-scale application in the daily lives of most persons with disabilities in the developing world and the digital divide comes in many forms now there are gaps in accessing core infrastructure so when you look at internet access at regional levels only about 21 of households in south asia and 17 of households in sub-saharan africa have internet access at home mobile phone penetration rates are high but when you drill down it is not the case with mobile broadband or data services or even smartphones which have inbuilt accessibility features data from census and household surveys shows that households of persons with disabilities have lower ownership of almost all forms of ict personal computers or mobile fords even landline forts they have lower rates of internet use and also lower digital literacy and skills and these gaps are higher for women with disabilities so it is clear that many factors beyond the mere presence of technology need to be in place for digital inclusion in our chapter we offer three categories of drivers in the digital ecosystem that we should address to reap the benefits of accessible technology for persons with disabilities first of all the human dimension of accessible technology we offer a couple of examples of technology failures because the human element was not addressed one comes from a school in a country in southern africa which has students with and without disabilities a charity had donated huge numbers of lightweight individual braille typewriters which would allow a student with visual disabilities to take their own notes in braille in real time in class the alternative was waiting for weeks to get class notes the problem was that only the devices were donated students and teachers were not trained on how to use them so the writers really remained in storage as a result another example comes from wide consultations that we did with organizations of persons with disabilities in west africa on digital identification systems which rely on capturing biometrics a child with down syndrome was unable to register for his id because the software to capture the photo of his face kept stalling an error it had not been designed to recognize differences in facial features and the enrollment officer instead of checking the manual which actually talked about exception protocols sent the child away so investing in the sensitization and capacity building of the human gatekeepers to digital services is essential the second category is focusing on systems and institutions the digital delivery of a service is not going to miraculously change things in terms of development if the underlying service itself continues to be inaccessible so it's not just about digital systems the analog systems need to be accessible too so let's consider transport services an accessible kiosk or a mobile ticketing service may allow someone to purchase a trade ticket with ease but the train itself may not be accessible or legal prohibitions to independent banking solely on the basis of having a disability negates the advantages of having digital accessible digital banking solutions so really digital investments needs simultaneous actions towards improving the policy environment the range and type of core services for persons with disabilities and mechanisms to actually meaningfully interact and engage with public systems let me also add a note of caution on the over alliance or of using things like artificial intelligence or big data and new development programs without addressing consciously addressing issues of bias or ethics you know there are huge data gaps on the lived experiences of persons with disabilities in traditional data sets in developing countries as well as the vast amounts of digital data used for big data analysis so can we truly use analysis based on data that does not include the voices of persons with disabilities to drive development decisions that impact their lives or similarly for you know ai enabled programs we have to be mindful of replicating human bias or using data that comes from systems that have actually traditionally intentionally excluded persons with disabilities such as employment recruitment processes the final category that we talk about is regulations and attention to the legislative environment that shapes the availability and use of technology including the adoption of accessibility standards and if he can borrow from experiences experiences in developed economies we know that the evolving nature of technology really requires just-in-time policies that are adaptive that are modifiable that are rapidly enforceable and that are widely communicated both to consumers and producers of technology so in conclusion technology is truly important tool for inclusive development but it is not a magic solution by itself so to read the optimal outcomes requires investments in what we call the analog components of the digital ecosystem as well thank you thank you deepti over to you amy all right thank you so much that was so interesting uh my name is again amy landers and uh thank you to the harvard law school library and the wonderful editors of the book uh michael and jonathan my topic has to do with the patent system which is a creature of the north it was uh some a system legal system developed in europe and spread throughout the world through colonialism and ultimately uh became is frozen by the uh worldwide trips agreement of which so many countries have joined um so this treaty this system uh fundamentally is based on sets of assumptions which uh essentially provide the inventor a right which restricts access of others to make that invention so in other words the the patent goes to someone who is the exclusive source for uh being able to make and sell that invention um by restricting access they get to charge supra competitive pricing in other words very expensive uh pricing so that they can recoup the cost of their research and development um so these assumptions have environmental assumptions sort of built in as well they assume you know in the united states we have comparatively easy access to funding whether through grants venture capital uh there may be um other mechanisms which people can access to fund sort of the creation and commercialization of their idea um also it assumes that we have customers who are able to pay for super competitive pricing so it's it's a lot of assumptions that don't hold true in all cultures in all areas um primarily no the northern uh sort of companies hold the majority of patents in this space in the assistive technology space um and they are uh complex and scientific breakthroughs and technological breakthroughs and you know there's some really wonderful devices uh which can cost thousands of dollars um they have many moving parts for example a refreshable braille display may have numerous rows up to nine rows which is you know you can read quite a bit but it makes it bulky it makes it expensive and it can be as a practical matter uh difficult to access throughout the world according to one source only one in ten people in the developing world have access to the devices that they would like to have and so these assumptions built in the north don't work terribly well for the rest of the world um what does work what does what kind of innovations are coming out of the developing world um generally speaking they are based on different kinds of creativity uh very robust and very interesting problem solvers are working all around the world to create devices that are really giving people access in ways that are really meaningful to them um they um are using variations of design thinking for example one is called market shaping which considers that the user is the center of the invention we really have to be empathetic and look at the world through their eyes and consider that their environment is diverse and complicated and so one example of an invention which came out of this way of thinking is called the orbit reader which is a very small compact braille uh reading device which has only one line it's very small it's more in the you know 200 range and not in the 2500 range and so it it's possible for um you know organizations to buy a larger quantity of these and distribute them and because they're fairly mechanically simple they have fewer problems with breakage and so you know it can be used by all kinds of people in many kinds of conditions another kind of thinking is called systems thinking where one sort of thinks about okay well maybe there isn't this resource or that resource but what is there and so one one invention is called the embrail um um i'm sorry the uh yeah the unbraille uh app which essentially allows people to learn on android phones which are more accessible in some areas than others but they are accessible and so this app um is used by children the app was developed by deep conversations with teachers who said i don't have time to look over everybody's shoulder with the embryo app people can fundamentally teach themselves more independently it gives feedback it's a very consistent app so you only have to learn how to use it once and then it can take you to different levels where you can apply the same logic and extend your expertise pretty rapidly the last kind i'm going to talk about is called frugal innovation which essentially takes something that is very very complicated and simplifies it and and one example is called the the bracet printer which you know their braille printers out of the global north that are very complicated and they're very quick and they use a lot of different moving parts called solenoids the embryo essentially reduced all of that complexity just to one solenoid which is much less expensive it's much less likely to break it's much you know less power hungry and it works and so the kind of thinking that is user-centric really understands the environment its strengths and sort of how to fill gaps are really coming up with some remarkable things i will say that these kinds of inventions are not really clicking terrifically with a global patent system that was developed in the north with the patent system that for example we have in the united states we're really all about pushing science forward we want to see you add it's a very additive way of of um you know the kind of inventions that make it really add things to things that already existed before they improve them they may add super fast solenoids to printers they may make things uh go the extra mile and the patent system currently for example the one where you're we're using in the us does not re reward reduction simplification uh user-centricness and so um i i sort of posited in my chapter whether we could under the global patent agreement come up with a patent system that would reward things like free expression uh human dignity those kinds of concerns in addition to uh scientific advance and you know no one has done it no country has done it so far so what are our options one would be to consider whether the patent system really works well for this particular field in each country it is a system that's built for restricting access and in this area we would prefer i think to see broader access at lower prices and so in my chapter i explore alternative rewards that could be implemented either at a governmental or non-governmental entity level for example prizes grants direct funding rewards for open source innovations rewards for not patenting for example there's a lovely hearing aid that was developed by an individual who used solar power rather than battery because batteries are hard to get and it's a very soft mold so you don't have to have it fitted and he decided not to patent because he wanted everyone to copy so that there would be broader access to his invention so lots to think about um in in sort of the ways that we in the in the low in the north sort of reward certain kinds of thinking and perhaps we even in the north could learn from uh some of the solutions that are being developed in the in the south so thank you thank you amy that was wonderful raja will you kindly join us so i thank you for the opportunity to talk about my chapter within the book accessible technology in the developing world talking about the global south and really focusing on including people of who have disabilities in the design from the beginning and making sure that people who have disabilities are involved in the process from the start and increasing their potential protecting against loss losing income those are the goals of the book to really strive towards changing that the challenge with banking in the global south is that there are not enough funds to support access for all to all services because it is so costly to do so each city and each rural area would have to fend for themselves it requires years and years of sustained investment so often with limited resource there is the concern of the economy and the economic impact and the prioritization for over people who have disabilities and excluding them from the process as well as the design and any new endeavors so the book really looks at three core themes the lack of attention given to innovations taking place in the developing world the need to ensure that infrastructures in the global south do not present barriers to people with disabilities and also the need to exercise caution when applying techniques from global north to the global cells that they won't transfer effectively more and more banks and financial services in the global south have focused on mobile banking and the access to those acts but they negate other types of resources roads buildings electricity infrastructure that is required for the consumer to actually gain access to the internet itself as well as the electricity to then power up the internet and we want to make sure that there is a have been heavily influenced decision making process based on people who have disabilities and their approach and their lived experiences not only in technology but also in policy to give you an example if you think about a policy about finance and how that works with the banking system knowing your client and knowing your customer you have to validate your identity with a personal banking card or some type of id often these things become obstacles because of their cost to get those verification means provided so possibly fixing those areas of weakness or gaps allows you to then provide access to a broader scope of people including those with people who have disabilities but not only through the bank but also through the phone company itself it can be a two-pronged attack but again there are still barriers that are present in some developing countries phones have become banks by offering financial services through the phone where you're able to pay and then go to an area phone or area representative because the phone is more universal than it's easier to have more essential approach with the phone company than it would be to have an approach for each of the banks one example comes from kenya where there's a much more centralized phone service that incorporates the banks that average distance to a phone center is one tenth of the distance that it takes you to get a bank and that has a huge impact for people who live in rural areas or people who have disabilities as they try to arrange transportation to those areas but the model can't be copied and it can't be transitioned to all places because there are barriers in different places that might not allow that to happen because there are banking solutions that do not go through financial services or do not go through banks things for other financial services so then you need a financial manager who is able to break down those barriers promote access and be able to allow the consumer to have access to the phone service within which to allow them to have access to those banking mobile solutions so in summary the global south has many different obstacles that they are facing and barriers that they need to actually reduce those being the banking system as well as different financial services it's important to encourage developing countries and specific centers by adding specific regulations rules and like regis regulatory means to incorporate from a design perspective from the very beginning the perspective of those of people who have people with disabilities then there also has to be training and awareness that has to be done a lot of education in the area needs to be done and then a reporting system needs to be put in place in place in order to make sure that all of those things that have been agreed upon are actually being followed through and that the services are actually provided to people with disabilities that they've been asked and we can also give us an opportunity to look through any gaps and analyze the process to see if we need to correct it and work through those problems and again this is from a bottom up approach where you're gaining that access from the users of the service so we want to make sure that access for all is the overriding theme that we're able to have specific measuring tools to in order to see that that success is undertaken and maintained so we can provide better access for all so thank you for the time thank you ever so much raja we have a wonderful question submitted by co-author book contributor paul harper from australia that i think would be very appropriate for all three of our panelists and you're welcome of course to take the question as as you like and to use it in relation to your own perspectives and paul points out that a law student without a disability can walk into a law library decide to either pick up the print book or click on the database whereas a student with a print disability can either get help finding a print book or scanning it editing it and then reading it or they could just use a digital format so the digital access has significant effects for those students and staff with print disabilities he points out that in the global south educational rates for certain disability groups are a fraction of that of their able-bodied peers kenya for one example is something like one percent so if a person with a disability somehow manages to get through k-12 they need access in higher education to become a professional make their way in the world and begin to express their leadership how can we ensure this access in higher education and he's asking for your thoughts each of you if you like maybe we could start with raja and then work our way back to amy and deep d and then jonathan you're you're in church so having access digitally a way to trans uh translate that information having it available for anybody who wants to access it i mean it's a basic human right and knowing how important education is having access to literary information should be a priority you know and having this education is going to be the foundation for all the other accessibility innovations that we come up with whether it be in government everyday life banking so it does need to start there i guess i would say that there's sort of two pieces from the ip perspective and that would be ensuring that local law provides exceptions which in many countries they do to translate works that are published into accessible formats um and that is is quite prevalent and so to ensure that that trans you know translation can be done without concern um and then the other is to make sure that there are devices available to the extent that they're needed um to access the material um in the in the best way possible and that that really is um sometimes a question of being able to afford the devices or having devices that are going to work in the environment that exist uh in those countries um and so um and that can be as as you point out in your in your question so so so important um and so with the patent side of things right uh maybe or a grant or maybe working with an agency to sort of develop something or get access to to the devices plus the translation side of things would be the primary concerns and i can i won't repeat like agree fully with what raja and amy have said and polyurea is a very very important question this is a serious gap uh and it becomes one of the biggest challenges right in the pathway to work uh including the digital economy so i mean it almost seemed like you started answering your question yourself just listing you know just so many aspects of the system uh that actually need to be addressed and um i'm not you know i like i said i won't repeat what um my co-panelists have already said but what i would recommend is thinking about a twin track approach right that we talk about a lot when it comes to disability inclusive development so what we want to do is we want to ensure that students with disabilities have access to what students with disabilities without disabilities have access to right so the learning environment learning materials adapted examinations the ability to learn not just in the school sitting but to be able to take your assistive devices or access your learning content in your home or your residential setting um so thinking just about these so that's one track but the second track is you know have there been skills deficits or deficits in just the movement from primary to secondary to now higher education for students with disabilities that may need to be addressed and the last thing i'll say again um i think just underlining um the human dimension that i spoke about and that we covered in our chapter we really need to focus on training the the different stakeholders right in the system so not just about allow making sure that the students themselves are trained enable you know able to use their assistive devices able to use learning materials but training school personnel administrators and teachers not just on the importance of having accessible learning environments but how to how do you incorporate technology into your curriculum into your learning resources into your supports so again just i think focusing on that capacity building is really important great thank you again amy raja and deepti we have time for one more question and then jocelyn is going to do a wrap up uh so here's the one question now the three of you are all actively involved in terms of digital accessibility in developing areas what is either your take away right for people or your action item for people who say well i work on accessibility but i'm not involved in any developing areas you know i i work in north america i work in europe i you know i work for a tech company i work at a university what what is your takeaway your action item that you want to challenge those people to do to learn about what actions to take to help improve overall technology inclusion around the world especially in developing areas maybe i could start yeah uh what i want to say is if there's one thing that the last 18 months of the pandemic have proved to us is that there is no such thing as borders right viruses move and so do technologies and your market is global it is not just the the country that you that you know you are headquartered it's a global market uh and it's a global market not just of consumers but of content providers of people who can expand your economic base so i mean that that would be my um you know big thing to say and i think also the takeaway is jonathan i just want to repeat what you said in the beginning that look we have an opportunity or we have an opportunity um digital technologies ict are being used today across the world in development if we don't use this moment we are actually going to cause more marginalization great thank you deepti fantastic answer uh who wants to go next amy looks like he's unmuted so amy please you go next i'm happy to i guess i would say just recognize the extreme talent of so many people who are not maybe within your circle bring them in hire them uh get feedback from them find out what their needs are and you know i think awareness of you know there's so many excellent problem solvers all you know throughout the united states that i think if they could you know listen here and put themselves in the shoes of people who are uh living differently i think that they could come up and support um some incredible solutions okay wonderful thank you amy and raja yeah i would just want to add to that um the global economy there's so much diversity that needs to be tapped into um for example mobile banking um having that be developed in the global south having that new app that isn't maybe so dependent on high internet services or not only dependent on all these factors that aren't always stable so just making sure that what's developed isn't only for the global north that there's more diversity with our planning and more focus is on the global market so it's beneficial to everybody okay a big thank you again to deepti amy and raja not only for being fantastic panels today but also for being such a pleasure to work with throughout the whole book process um so thank you a big thank you to michael for co-editing the book with me um thank you again to harvard law school for hosting this book talk and a big thank you to the radcliff institute for advanced study for um hosting the initial exploratory seminar that kicked off this whole project and now i will turn it back over to jocelyn for wrap-up jonathan you did a fabulous job wrapping us up thank you all thank you so much for being here today um you've given us all a great deal to think about so we look forward to hearing more from all of you in reading the book thank you have a great afternoon everyone

2021-10-27 00:31

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