37th Annual CSUN Assistive Technology Conference Has Concluded

Towards Knowledge Equity through Inclusion

Date & Time

Friday, March 18, 2022 - 2:20 PM PST

Location

Grand GHJK

Description

Wikimedia Foundation believes that everyone should have access to ever-increasing digital powers of content creation, distribution, and consumption. This ethic and its problem-solving strategies are part of Foundation's approach on inclusive design. The Foundation’s product department has just recently, through a longer-term process, established a diversity, equity and inclusion framework for inclusive product development. For this, we’ve taken into account the decades of work by volunteers on making Wikipedia and sibling projects accessible and successful and have included many voices in the organization to bring in the widest possible perspectives. In this presentation we would like to provide a closer look at the framework and the many different initiatives around accessibility under the umbrella of knowledge equity in the Foundation, with a focus on the Product department, our biggest user base on the web of one of the most successful free and open knowledge projects in the world. Specifically outlining the successes throughout the last couple of years, like implementing consistently applied guidelines with accessibility standards as crucial base, leading to a simpler and easier to use interface for most of our users and giving an outlook of a major change in front-end technology in the works – again centered around inclusive user needs. Challenge and opportunity in our special place in the internet are our powerful and vocal Wikimedia movement communities and volunteers. Which we have to cater to in our product development and at the same time “convince” about our initiatives, something that has helped us to simplify our products even more. Our design guidelines aim at empowering people, not enforcing them. Making all of the world’s knowledge freely available is a monumental task that some consider to be impossible. It is undoubtedly a slow process that cannot be managed from the top down in a fundamentally volunteer-driven movement, but it is absolutely worth it, because with the philosophical, ethical, and technical basis we try to provide, we are one step closer.

Audience

Higher Education
Information & Communications Technology
Government
Media & Publishing
Marketing

Audience Level

Beginning

Session Summary (Abstract)

Wikimedia Foundation believes that everyone should have access to ever-increasing digital powers of content creation, distribution, and consumption. How the Foundation's diversity, equity and inclusion product framework helps pave the way closer to knowledge equity.

Session Type

General Track

Topics