Equity and Access Track: Group Report - Summary of the Issues - The Research Center on Computing & Society

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Amy Rubin

Summary of the Issues

1. Software and hardware are most often designed without regard to differential physical and cognitive abilities. The computing community is moving slowly to address these needs.

2. Even if adaptive technology is available in a special lab, while others have distributed access, this “separate but equal” access to computing resources still results in inequity.

3. Safety and perceived safety factors (like those encountered by women who must use computing facilities in remote areas or at night) can be barriers to access.

4. Economic status determines access, level of access, and type of access. For example: costly state-of-the-art equipment, on-line information fees available to only those individuals and corporations able to pay, and one computer per person vs. sharing computing resources.

5. Gender inhibits or promotes access. Boys frequently do not let girls play with computers. Women are steered away from technology. Women are allowed access only after an area becomes commonplace, well understood, and of lower status (application programming and systems analysis are shifting from male dominated to female pluralistic occupations; while system programming is still male dominated).

6. Culture inhibits or promotes access. For example, software or documentation that is available in only one language, software that ignores differing traditions of learning and scholarship, or the incorporation of ethnocentric icons and interfaces in software.

7. Discrepancies exist among the values expressed in computing technology by computing technologists as well as the community and society at large. For example consider the following list of values that appear in delivered computer based systems.

Actualized: (lots of evidence)

fast

clever

mine

Professed: (some evidence, in decreasing order)

on-time and within-budget

meets specification (can’t blame me)

correct (acceptable level of visible bugs – critical bugs well-disguised until I’m on some other project)

user friendly (minimal interface standards)

useful (fills an organizational need)

usable

Recommendations

Specific actions are required from at least three groups: 1) individuals and teams of individuals; including the members of the Equity and Access Track Group; 2) the Research Center on Computing and Society; and 3) government, corporations and funding agencies. Many of our recommendations require concerted and coordinated action by two or all of the three groups.

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