FodnessMemo17

1) Literature Review

My project will first encompass a literature review of the important literatures that address design and disability in an IT context. There are some journal articles on this, but I am unaware if there are any books published on the subject. The literature review will also incorporate elements from user centered design and other design studies literature to set the stage for why the current method of design is not serving the users particularly well.

2) Policy Analysis

The policy analysis section will be an examination of the current federal and state policies with respect to designing for disability in the United States. The laws will be analyzed for strong and weak sections, and sections that are missing. Laws in particular that will be addressed are the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Rehabilitation Act, particularly Section 508. The legal context of suing companies for inaccessible websites will be addressed through the NFB vs. Target lawsuit.

3) Educational Analysis

Here I will address some of the educational institutions that are educating the computer scientists and IT professionals to see what the current state of accessibility design education is. I will conduct interviews at RPI and two other schools, yet to be chosen, but from the basket of MIT, RIT, Carnegie Mellon, and Virginia Tech. I will interview students and professors as well as department chairs.

4) Software Engineer Analysis

I will conduct interviews with software engineers who are designing software and websites to determine what their education has been with regard to designing for accessibility, what their company's policies are regarding design for accessibility, and how they negotiate questions of design. I will also determine if individuals with disabilities are included in the testing process when they are creating their software. I would like to analyze this both from the perspective of software engineers designing software that will be used by individuals with disabilities and software that creates code, such as Dreamweaver, to determine if software like Dreamweaver has any mechanism for enforcing accessibility. I will also determine whether software engineers are making attempts to code software to be accessible with minimal input from the end user - such as automatic subtitling based on voice recognition in software like YouTube (so that the burden of subtitling isn't put on the people who upload the video).

5) Reform Organization Analysis

There are various organizations that are fighting for laws and standards to improve accessibility of software. My project will include at least a description of who these organizations are and what their mission is, if not interviews with their members. With some of the work I would like to do, I will run up against constraints in time and resources, so this is one of the areas where I would cut interviews if necessary.

6) Ethnography of the Disabled

I will conduct interviews with multiple individuals with different disabilities that affect them in an IT context to get a sense of what their experiences are like with interacting with IT, as well as to determine how cyberspace is constructed for the disabled. This analysis will help to draw the reader in to the problems that are inherent in inaccessible IT design, which will help make the case for change.