OLITA Digital Odyssey 2012: Outside-In – Approach to Inclusiveness

The presenter spoke quite quickly,and there was a lot of points on the slides, so I didn’t catch everything. I also focused more on design aspects than anything else.

Defining Inclusive Design

  • design that is inclusive of the full range of human diversity with respect to ability, language, culture, gender, age, and other forms of human difference
  • designing for diversity

Digital Exclusion

  • access to online systems no longer an option
  • estimated social and economic cost of digital exclusion
  • required for government, commerce, education ,etc.

Bridging the Gap

  • developers design for the typical or average user
  • Assistive technology (AT) is intended to bridge the gap to reach anyone that requires alternative access systems
  • this bridge is inadequate: only some disabilities and only reaches a few countries

Specialized Assistive Technology

  • 28% of the world
  • rising in cost
  • decreasing in availability

Accessibility Legislation

  • necessary foundation for systematic change
  • AODA groundbreaking approach to legislating accessibility
  • but currently
    • hard to update
    • hard to keep current
    • accessibility requirements seen to constrain innovation
    • fear of implementing new technologies
    • one-size-fits-all solution

Global Consensus

  • need new approach
  • especially with an aging population, which needs more alternatives as they grow older

True Accessibility

Need New Approach

  • more inclusive of full diversity of learners
  • more relevant to educational demands
  • more timely and continuously renewable
  • contextualized or embedded in learner’s context