I thought it was really cool that Chancey showed us her Braille Display. It was also interesting to see how zoom reacts to a Braille Display - it seemed kind of hard to even change the virtual background. I also didn’t know that Braille was really important for library services and work in STEM. Chancey also opened my eyes to how different accessibility tools are harder to learn from people that aren’t knowledgable about them. She gave the example of going to an AT&T store and how if she asked someone at a store to help her learn how to use it they wouldn’t know how to help. I also think that it is amazing that they had groups every week to help people learn how to use different technologies like social media, dating sites, and even online shopping. I also was really interested in the assistive tech aspect of it all and how much new technology that I have never heard of. The tactile graphic of flattening the curve was also super cool. The process for how to create these graphics seems pretty intensive. It was interesting to see how different lines are formed and how some are chunkier than others. She also used the wording “image-poverty” to describe how a lot of people that are visually impaired are living in a world where they can’t see the graphics and they don’t own the tech to transfer the graphic into a tactile one.
Chancey’s had a talk called Data and Society Fellow where she talks about how there needs to be more attention and exploration into “the state of non-visual access to everyday digital interactions”. She goes on to talk about how there is a “dark pattern” where people don’t develop everyday technology with the insight of the blind community. She also talked about ghostwritten code which is code that is supposed to help the visually impaired community, but they don’t test it.
In Max’s work, I think it is really surprising to me that he has to constantly inform his coworkers of his identities. I guess we take that for granted at NYU as we are so used to being surrounded by people with a variety of amazing identities. It was also interesting to hear things from his point of view especially about the Application example and having to choose “Man, Woman, or Do not Wish to Identify”. I think it is really important for everyone to see how there is a lot of discrimination still in the world today especially in the area of STEM. I also thought the discussion of the checkboxes vs radio button was important. I never really gave much thought to that.