TECHNOLOGY'S AFTERTHOUGHT: TECHNOLOGY'S AFTERTHOUGHT: PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

ByAaliyahRandall ByAaliyahRandall

Technology is without a doubt an ever-changing and constantly growing field that greatly influences our experience on this earth. Because of technology, humans have been able to accomplish the unimaginable. We are able to instantly communicate with others who are thousands of miles away, we have created life-saving treatments for many health concerns, and we’ve even been able to put a man on the moon. Technology’s impact seems so endless and indisputable. However, technology doesn’t just make things easier for humans, it can actually create barriers for certain groups of people. More specifically, the people who create and develop technology invent barriers by not keeping in mind the needs of minority groups such as people with disabilities.

As technology has progressed throughout the years, we’ve been able to use its capabilities to improve the livelihoods of many people with disabilities in special ways. Devices such as prosthetics, hearing aids, scooters, braille keyboards, screen readers, etc. have proven to be very helpful to people with disabilities who are trying to navigate an ableist world. These technologies can make things such as the internet, the outdoors, and entertainment more accessible for the disabled community. Nevertheless, we must ask the question of why some of these technologies must exist and how compatible our world applications are to the necessary accommodative technologies used by people with disabilities.

Since the signing of The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990, people have had to think more intentionally about the treatment of the disabled community. The ADA prohibits “discrimination against people with disabilities in everyday activities” (Americans with Disabilities Act, 1990). Further, it “guarantees that people with disabilities have the same opportunities as everyone else to enjoy employment opportunities, purchase goods and services, and participate in state and local government programs” (Americans with Disabilities Act, 1990). The ADA legislation requires that employers, state and local governments, businesses that are open to the public, commercial facilities, transportation providers, and telecommunication companies comply with the standards set by the ADA to ensure accessibility.

With the passing of the ADA, many corporations set out to achieve the bare minimum in terms of accessibility by doing just enough to be ADA compliant. This can be very problematic as there is a lack of care for the true needs and experiences people with disabilities possess when interacting with certain products and programs. Because people with disabilities are not considered at the design level of products, barriers are created that make deceptively accessible products and applications difficult to use for people with disabilities. Some examples of these technological barriers include: website functions that only work with clicking a mouse, inaccurate closed captioning, self-service kiosks without accessibility features, and touchscreens without screen reader software or tactile keyboards (Kovac, 2019). Additionally, there are other factors that contribute to these accessibility barriers, for example, lack of access to assistive computer hardware and software such as key guards, trackballs, large monitors, head-pointing systems, screen readers, screen magnification, or speech recognition programs (Kovac, 2019).

By centering the needs of those most marginalized at the first step of design, we can remove barriers before they are even created and make products that are more usable by not only people with disabilities, but those without disabilities as well. Tools such as speech recognition are useful for people with mobility issues and those who are effective multi-taskers. Websites that are designed to use keyboard commands also become easier for search engines to find and makes these websites more likely to be browsed. Companies like Microsoft are making strides in the right direction by including eye tracking features in their software and creating tools like Immersive Reader that reads out text, breaks words into syllables, and increases spacing between lines and letters (Daniel, 2019). A Hungarian company SignAll has developed the first automated sign language translator which translates sign language into text through the use of AI, allowing communication between deaf and hearing people with great potential (Daniel, 2019).

Going the extra mile and keeping people with disabilities as the priority user at the design level, we are able to create technology that is more usable for all. People with disabilities should not be a second-thought for designers, but the most valuable user to learn from. Ensuring accessibility needs to be prioritized because it makes a huge difference in the way many people experience life. The standards of accessibility should not stop at being ADA compliant. The standard should be above and beyond the stars, just like the man on the moon because it is the human thing to do.

References: Kovac,L (2019,November22) DisabilityandTechnologyBarriers AccessibilityforOntarianswithDisabilitiesAct(AODA) https://aodaca/disability-andtechnologybarriers/#:~:text=For%20instance%2C%20some%20technology%20barriers,magnification%2C%20or%20speech%20recognition%20programs Daniel,E (2019,June25) Howaccessibletechnologyisovercomingbarriersintheworkplace Verdict https://wwwverdictcouk/accessible-technologymicrosoft/ AmericansWithDisabilitiesActof1990,42U.S.C.§12101etseq.(1990).

Chat G to wri is an workfl have used AI for hiring, credit card applications, among other uses However, despite its amazing ability Ai has shown significant bias , often mirroring our own biases as well as the internet's rhetoric.

A recent Bloomberg article listed a number of racist and sexist comments made by chat gpt This is not the first time something like this has taken place The apple credit card used a complex AI system to approve and deny members as well as set their credit limits. Users noticed that women were continually given lower limits than their male counterparts Amazon recently had to stop using its ai recruiting tool when it began prioritizing men

So why are these AI’s so biased? In the end it comes down to the way Ai functions. Ai looks to find patterns in data, so for instance Amazon’s recruiting Ai was set to find patterns in resumes over the last 10 years Because the majority of those applications had been male, the Ai then believed that being male was part of the hiring criteria In Apple's case they defended themselves by saying that gender is not even a criteria in their applications in order to refute claims of bias. A recent Wired article titled The Apple Card Didn’t See Gender and That's the Problems refutes Apple's claims explaining “ , it is entirely possible for algorithms to discriminate on gender, even when they are programmed to be “blind” to that variable For another, imposing willful blindness to something as critical as gender only makes it harder for a company to detect, prevent, and reverse bias on exactly that variable.” The author goes on to explain that other data can be used as a proxy, for instance in past algorithms there has been evidence of home addresses being used as a proxy for race In this way not allowing input of information is not eliminating the bias, just making it harder to detect

So why is Chat Gpt, what is in many ways a glorified search engine, spitting out racist and sexist information? It all comes back to looking for patterns in data Tay microsoft’s twitter bot became incredibly racist and sexist less than a day after launching James Vinent in an article for the Guardian notes “But while it seems that some of the bad stuff Tay is being told is sinking in, it's not like the bot has a coherent ideology ” The crucial piece here is that although tay can repeat information, the bot has no real understanding of what it means Therefore her racism and sexism is simply a product of her input Chat GPT was simply mirroring the information it found online, much of which was biased.

What is the solution? The first may just be for us, as humans, to be better These AIs are simply reflecting back to us amalgamations of data we enter into them Without a prior gender bias in hiring Amazon’s Ai would never have discriminated against women. Without the hordes of twitter spamming Tay she wouldn’t have found her extreme views But this also brings us to one of the limits of AI Ai is not innovating, rather it is repackaging and recycling what it already knows Because of this Ai in its purest form will uphold the status quo Ask chat gpt to write a poem, and it will not elevate the field of poetry, instead it will just create a piece of work that is the same as what we already have. Using AI isn’t necessarily bad, but using it without understanding its limitations is incredibly dangerous Ai may be the pinnacle of technological progress but at the same time it may be stunting social progress As Ai becomes more prevalent we must make sure we continue moving forwards.