2025 CFM Workshop - Digital Accessibility & Justice Being Chronically Online for Collective Liberati

MORE JUSTICE, MORE JOY

digital accessibility

& justice BEING CHRONICALLY ONLINE FOR COLLECTIVE LIBERATION

PRESENTED BY RADS

welcome!

What is Digital Accessibility?

Universal, Usable, & Accessible Design #ShittyAltText Alex Haagaard Contemporary Movements: Guerilla Open Access & #AltTextForPalestine Design Justice & Disability Justice

digital accessibility means that “websites, tools, and technologies are designed and developed so that people with disabilities

can

use

them.”

But

the

assistive

technologies that allow people to use and interact with websites only work if we create content to be accessible. This might include our language, color scheme, layout, and structure, assistive technologies or access supports, and more! definition from World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

Perceivable

P O U R

People can perceive of content through at least one of their senses.

Operable People can use interactive elements, no matter how they are interacting with the content

Understandable People should be able to understand what the content means and how to use it, predictable and consistent!

Robust People should be able to use them on any device or with any type of assistive technology, makes use of ‘best practices’ ‘International Standards for Digital Accessibility’ | POUR (W3C)

design should be...

Accessible design process that specifically considers disabled people

Universal design process that aims to be usable by all people

Usable design process centering easy & efficient use

Learn more about Accessible, Universal, & Usable Design!

7 Principles of

“everything is designed. few things are designed well.”

Brian Reed

Design is a discipline of study and practice focused on the interaction between a person — a ‘user’— and the manmade environment, taking into account aesthetic, functional, contextual, cultural and societal considerations. As a formalised discipline, design is a modern construct.

International Council of Design

shitty alt text Haagaard’s work here, initiated on social media platforms, foregrounds the ways in which hashtag activism is a #CripRitual [... #ShittyAltText invites conversations] calling out inaccessibility and negotiating better relations between content creators and observers.

Creating Alt Text + IDs

Writing Helpful Alt Text

Describing Content & Images

Do you feel the existing captions are sufficient as image descriptions or Alt Text? Why or why not?

What would you include in an image description? You can practice with an image of yourself, too! What would you like people to know about you, or communicate, through an image?

What does fairness look like when computers shape decision-making?

The path to a more equitable future starts with the humans behind the machines, not just algorithms. Can AI be created by and for low-income and communities of color? This popular education-inspired guide breaks down and contextualizes artificial intelligence technologies within structural racism — and provides hands-on exercises to help us imagine beyond, and dream up alternate and ideal futures with AI. Purchase or Download

AI IN ACTION Virtual Assistants Handwriting Recognition Facial Recognition Machine Translation Spam Filtering Conversational Systems Recommendation Engines

What forms of intelligence are prioritized in AI?

access to the internet is a HUMAN RIGHT. “Everybody gets the right to speak on the internet, it’s a matter of who is heard.”

— Aaron Swartz

Guerilla Open Access Manifesto “Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves. [...] We need to fight for Guerilla Open Access. With enough of us, around the world, we’ll not just send a strong message opposing the privatization of knowledge — we’ll make it a thing of the past.

Will you join us?

Alt Text for Palestine Toolkit

Design mediates so much of our realities and has tremendous impact on our lives, yet very few of us participate in design processes. In particular, the people who are most adversely affected by design decisions — about visual culture, new technologies, the planning of our communities, or the structure of our political and economic systems — tend to have the least influence on those decisions and how they are made.

Design justice rethinks design processes, centers people who are normally marginalized by design, and uses collaborative, creative practices to address the deepest challenges our communities face.

Design Justice Network, Principles

thank you! what will you design? access workshop guide with more information & linked resources — available here.