Digital Frictions and Dark Patterns in Accessible Technology

This lecture will trouble the idea that all accessible technology is inherently liberatory and good. We’ll explore how designers without disabilities create accessible technologies that constrain disabled people by failing to play to individual strengths; examine cases where accessibility tools with limited utility garner maximal public relations capital; and reflect on the new privacy exposures and dependencies created for everyone, disabled and not, by cloud-connected apps for independent living. Attendees will be invited to imagine a collective tech future where individual strengths, privacy and choice are centered in the context of accessible technology.

Bio: Chancey Fleet is a 2018-19 Data & Society Fellow and current Affiliate-in-Residence whose writing, organizing and advocacy aims to catalyze critical inquiry into how cloud-connected accessibility tools benefit and harm, empower and expose communities of disability. Chancey is the Assistive Technology Coordinator at the New York Public Library where she founded and maintains the Dimensions Project, a free open lab for the exploration and creation of accessible images, models and data representations through tactile graphics, 3d models and nonvisual approaches to coding, CAD and “visual” arts. Chancey was recognized as a 2017 Library Journal Mover and Shaker.

This event is part of the 2nd Season of the Feminist and Accessible Publishing and Communications Technologies Speaker and Workshop Series (https://www.feministandaccessiblepublishingandtechnology.com), organized by Dr. Alex Ketchum.