Hi! My name is Shehara Ranasinghe and I am an Integrated Digital Media Major at Tandon. I am currently a BS/MS student and I just took my first grad class which made me realize why Diversity and Technology is so important to me. The grad classes I am taking tend to focus a lot on what is happening in the world today and how and why design impacts it. So, this class, Diversity and Technology, will help provide me with a broader scope of what diversity is in terms of Technology. I am also an RA and have been involved a lot in Residential life at NYU so, I have gone through a lot of Diversity training. However, none of them have been related to technology. So, I took this class to learn more about how technology plays a part as it is such a huge part of our everyday lives.
I think one thing I've realized during my time in Tandon is that a lot of people don't realize that although the technologies that they are creating could help a lot of people, there is probably a demographic of people that are being isolated as they can't use it. This happened to me first hand when I was building a website. I knew websites should obviously be accessible for everyone especially those who may be visually impaired, but I didn't really know how to do that. So, eventually I realized I could use a screen reader to see what someone who was visually impaired would get from my website. That experience shocked me because my website was completely inaccessible even though I thought I did everything I could. Ever since then, I really wanted to learn more about how to make the technologies we use more accessible to EVERYONE which is why I decided to take this class!
The field trips that interest me the most is the Brownsville Community Justice Center as well as the social justice walking tour on gentrification just because I have never heard of either of these things and would love to get to know more about them. It would be interesting to hear from a guest speaker who has done work with accessibility and technology. In my intro to Web Dev class, Claire Kearney-Volpe came in and talked about it and it was super interesting! The book that interests me the most is Diversity and Design Understanding Hidden Consequences because I am a design student so it would be interesting to read it and see if the practices I have are considered Diverse and Inclusive. This is an interesting read that could be added to the book list.