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Tangentium

 

January '05: Menu



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ISSN number: 1746-4757

  

Access, Communities and Information Technology: Links and other resources

First please note that issues addressed in this issue were also touched on in Tangentium, volume 1, issue 2: Social Exclusion, Language and IT.

Access and IT

The "accessibility" of the online world is usually mentioned in the context of making web sites accessible to "the disabled". In fact, what this really entails is the writing of web sites with an eye on diversity. WebAIM is a site which addresses these issues. As Coyne, Lee and Parker's paper notes, web designers should realise that the idea of a "portal" does not just imply something that provides access, but also something which can be used to bar certain groups from whatever lies beyond the threshold.

At a more general level, access to information technology is also addressed by initiatives such as UK Online. However, as the glossary definition of "participation" argues, accessible information technology should imply not just passive access to information and technology shaped by state-corporate interests, but active access. By this we mean the ability to: create and disseminate information; choose and design systems and their parameters; take autonomous decisions regarding IT policy in an organisation; and so on. Our previous links page, on activism and IT, noted some groups which were working to address these issues.

Communities, Urban and Rural

The official government line can be read on the Home Office web site, but one could read around this for some time without seeing much that is concrete, nor which addresses the specific problems of rural communities as noted in the papers of both Fiander and Macintosh & McKay-Hubbard.

Many rural communities have web portals, some of which are gathered together on regional sites such as Rural Community Gateway (a site for Scottish communities), the Cornwall Rural Community Council site or the Yorkshire Rural Community Council. But these are offering more general services, rather than anything ICT-specific.

For reviews of some projects which do look more at the role of ICT in particular rural areas see this page on the Countryside Agency site. One rural council's attempt to increase access can be seen on the Devontalk site. However, while there are several pages on the Web which look at the work of specific local authorities, there seem few that either take a more general approach, or which take an "unofficial" line (that is, are run by neither national nor local government). Suggestions are invited here.

This page has taken a UK bias (as do this month's papers), but for an international perspective, a good page of annotated links can be found at http://www.big-world.org/links/55.asp.