What is - , 08-11-2023

What is accessibility in digital and online social research?

Speaker(s):

Bio: Sarah Lewthwaite is a senior research fellow and social scientist with expertise in disability research, digital accessibility, pedagogy and critical theory. She is based at the Centre for Research in Inclusion at the University of Southampton. Sarah holds a PhD from the Learning Sciences Research Institute (University of Nottingham) and has significant experience working nationally and internationally on educational and inclusive research, most recently at the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods. Prior to academia, Sarah worked supporting and promoting access to education in disability support roles and in accessible web development. 'Teaching Accessibility in the Digital Skill Set' Sarah's Future Leaders Fellowship delivers a transformative programme of research into digital accessibility education at university and in the workplace. This is done to build workforce capacity for the development of accessible digital tools and services. Digital technologies have revolutionised daily life. Yet capacity for producing accessible tools and services has not kept pace with demand. This has exacerbated digital exclusion among disabled people and older populations. 'Teaching Accessibility in the Digital Skill Set' sets out to address this urgent issue. The study seeks to enhance the teaching of digital accessibility by delivering a new body of pedagogical knowledge grounded in empirical research. This will give teachers, trainers and peer-educators in computer science, industry, digital government and elsewhere a substantial body of knowledge to draw upon, to develop their teaching and more effectively build and scale learner's accessibility expertise. To do this, the four-year study (2019-2023) deploys a range of innovative participatory methods to build and also share knowledge, to create learning networks for accessibility educators and foster pedagogical culture. Sarah is using her Future Leaders Fellowship to establish digital accessibility education as field of academic research and to forge new collaborations and dialogue between academia and industry. She is building a world-leading research team that shares her mission to develop graduate and workforce capacity for accessibility and reduce digital exclusion in the UK and elsewhere. This is done to ensure that technology can be harnessed more effectively for all, now and in the future.

Abstract:

For social research to reflect our world as it is lived, research must be inclusive. In digital and online spaces, any claims to representation must be underpinned with technical foundations that ensure the research process is accessible to research teams, participants and wider publics irrespective of dis/ability. In this session, we will introduce the technical, social, legal, ethical and methodological dimensions of accessibility in digital and online research practice. We highlight useful intersections between digital accessibility and (feminist/hacker) epistemologies of bricolage to move from accommodating difference, to establishing conditions of 'radical hospitality'. We will also consider how researchers can to build connections and explore resources to support ongoing learning, to ensure accessibility principles are embedded in everyday digital and online research.