Critical Technology Accessibility

In 2003, the Defense Intelligence Agency asked the NRC to form a standing committee to help develop study topics about technology warning. One issue that was identified was the growing dependence on foreign suppliers of critical technology as a result of the increase in globalization of economic activity. Two important questions emerged for study: what is the risk of denial of critical products from foreign sources and what must the United States do to assure access to future critical products and technologies? This report presents an assessment addressing those two questions. It also provides an analysis of a strategic approach to manage the consequences of this trend towards increased globalization. Finally, the report offers a set of recommendations to implement this strategy and to increase assurance of access to critical technologies.

“All too often,” wrote disabled architect Ronald Mace, “designers don’t take the needs of disabled and elderly people into account.” Building Access investigates twentieth-century strategies for designing the world with disability in mind. Commonly understood in terms of curb cuts, automatic doors, Braille signs, and flexible kitchens, Universal Design purported to create a built environment for everyone, not only the average citizen. But who counts as “everyone,” Aimi Hamraie asks, and how can designers know? Blending technoscience studies and design history with critical disability, race, and feminist theories, Building Access interrogates the historical, cultural, and theoretical contexts for these questions, offering a groundbreaking critical history of Universal Design. Hamraie reveals that the twentieth-century shift from “design for the average” to “design for all” took place through liberal political, economic, and scientific structures concerned with defining the disabled user and designing in its name. Tracing the co-evolution of accessible design for disabled veterans, a radical disability maker movement, disability rights law, and strategies for diversifying the architecture profession, Hamraie shows that Universal Design was not just an approach to creating new products or spaces, but also a sustained, understated activist movement challenging dominant understandings of disability in architecture, medicine, and society. Illustrated with a wealth of rare archival materials, Building Access brings together scientific, social, and political histories in what is not only the pioneering critical account of Universal Design but also a deep engagement with the politics of knowing, making, and belonging in twentieth-century United States.

"Ever-changing technology and a generation of "digital-native" students challenge educators to keep pace, especially in preparing students for a successful future in an increasingly technologically advanced world. Well-known technology specialist and consultant Susan Brooks-Young emphasizes that incorporating effective, regular use of technology as a tool for teaching and learning is imperative if we want to "stay in the game." In this new book, Brooks-Young gathers her most popular and insightful work into a collection of practical technology strategies for issues most critical to busy school leaders. The book is organized into the following four sections, each focusing on a different aspect of technology leadership: New Literacies: the latest technology advances and opportunities for integration in schools Engaging Teachers and Students: tools and strategies for professional development, establishing a Web presence, classroom blogs, and distance learning Providing a Reliable Infrastructure: tech-ready facilities, cost management, software and networks, and the role of technology coordinators Legal and Social Concerns: Internet safety and security, precautions, copyright and plagiarism concerns, home-school communications, and much more School leaders will find detailed and concise information, extensive resources, and reflective questions for personal use or group discussion. This comprehensive, straightforward guide provides all the tools needed for effective technology leadership."--Publisher's website.

When digital content and technologies are designed in a way that is inaccessible for persons with disabilities, they are locked out of commerce, education, employment, and access to government information. In developing areas of the world, as new technical infrastructures are being built, it is especially important to ensure that accessibility is a key design goal. Unfortunately, nearly all research on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) accessibility and innovation for persons with disabilities-whether from the legal, technical, or development fields-has focused on developed countries, with very little being written about developing world initiatives. Accessible Technology and the Developing World aims to change this, by bringing increased attention to ICT accessibility in developing areas. This book brings together a unique combination of contributors with diverse disciplinary backgrounds, including authors from well-known non-governmental organizations, significant United Nations entities, and universities in both the developing and developed world. Together, they present a unique and much needed review of this critical and growing area of work, and primarily address three core themes - the lack of attention given to innovations taking place in the developing world, the need to ensure that infrastructures in the Global South do not present barriers to people with disabilities, and the need to exercise caution when applying techniques from the Global North to the Global South that won't transfer effectively. This book will be of use to researchers in the fields of civil rights, development studies, disability rights, disability studies, human-computer interaction and accessibility, human rights, international law, political science, and universal design.

Have we resigned ourselves to a cyber-future that has been decided behind our backs? Why is technology - and our understanding of it - central to the concerns of critical social theory? In developing the PC technologists have borrowed ideas from the human sciences about what people are like, about the nature of meaning and the desirability of some experiences over others. Yet, to date, the academic disciplines most concerned with these ideas have offered neither resistance nor debate. In this book, Graeme Kirkpatrick shows why it is crucial that we initiate that debate. Offering a revealing critique of PC design and the social assumptions that underlie it, Kirkpatrick argues that it relies on a particular conception of a capitalistic society that expects its technology to come pre-packaged, mass-marketed and "user-friendly". Anyone who is critical of such a society and its commodification of human achievement should, he suggests, be suspicious. Kirkpatrick argues that the computer is a contested space within which major social conflicts are played out. On the one hand, there is a narrative of flexibility and human empowerment, and on the other a sense of a "system" that controls our lives, leaving us in thrall to the computer corporations, and at constant risk from phishers and hackers. The outcomes of these conflicts are extremely important as they will shape our future experience of technology, society and politics. Critical Technology is a lively, provocative and often radical book, which forces us to reflect on the meaning of an artefact that is central to our daily lives, yet that we too often take for granted.

The proliferation of advanced militarily relevant technologies in the Asia-Pacific over the past few decades has been a significant, and perhaps even alarming, development. This volume addresses how such technologies may affect military capabilities and military advantage in the region.