Humanities Roundtable 2020: Building Diversity, Building Accessibility, Building Better

11:00am - 11:15am Welcome

11:15am - 11:45am Building Digital Environments of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Puente will address the evolving vocabulary in diversity, equity and inclusion and make the case for developing a common framework for discussing these issues and their application to practice in the cultural heritage and information fields.  Puente will address the need for building greater capacity for equity and access in a digital environment, and making inroads to reducing colonial influences on inquiry, language, norms, and technology.

11:45am - 12:15pm The Complexities of Vocabularies

This talk will provide a brief look at the opportunities and challenges associated with the development, management and use of knowledge organization systems (KOS) in support of content discovery and access. One of the greatest challenges is to minimize the introduction of bias in the structure and language of any KOS. Concrete examples will be taken from OCLC’s work to maintain the utility of the Dewey Decimal Classification Scheme.

12:15pm - 12:45pm Do's and Don'ts from the User Perspective

We design systems so that students and scholars can discover and access content, yet how do we know we are meeting their needs and expectations? How do we know if our language and taxonomies are enhancing or hindering discovery? In this presentation, you will learn techniques for putting yourself in the mind of your users. You’ll learn what we should do more and what we should do less to better optimize the user experience. 

12:45pm - 1:15pm Possible Next Steps (Single or multiple small group set-up)

Using Zoom break-out room functionality, attendees will be invited to engage with the speakers and with each other to consider viable approaches to the issues discussed. 

• Discussion about possible next steps  - 20 minutes

• Small Groups Report Back - 10 minutes

1:15pm - 1:45pm Lunch Break

1:45pm - 2:15pm ‘Disabled’ is a verb: reimagining the purposes of accessibility

We tend to think of ‘disabled’ as an adjective: an attribute of individuals. The disabled person has a body which is somehow limited in its capacity or functioning. Accessibility is therefore often conceptualized as a way of mitigating the inherent limitations of the disabled body.

However, for the past few decades, groups of disability theorist-activists have challenged us to think of disability as a product of the body in context, rather than as an inalienable attribute. In their understanding, individuals with impairments are disabled by interaction with situations or objects which fail to allow for their needs. This invites a re-imagination of accessibility as the provision of content that does not disable its users.

This talk will introduce examples of the treatment of specific impairments in law and in practice, to illustrate the usefulness of understanding ‘disabled’ as a verb. We will then consider how the process of disablement may be affected by intersecting characteristics (such as gender, wealth, age, and country of residence) and how these, too, must be factored into design for accessibility.

I hope to leave you with a richer understanding of what it means to produce accessible content, and why it matters that we do so.

2:15pm - 2:45pm - Solutions for Creating Accessible Content

The speaker is invited to provide the NISO audience with a case study

• Problem Faced; Determining the Best Solution 

• Challenges Faced and Overcome; Successes

• Next Steps 

2:45 - 3:00 Discussion

Using Zoom break-out room functionality, attendees will be invited to engage with the speakers and with each other to consider viable approaches to the issues discussed. 

3:00 - 3:15   Comfort Break

3:15 - 3:45 Building New, Building Better (Three Speakers with 10 Minutes Each)

Three speakers actively working in the field will address the following: 

• Are there metadata elements/fields unique to the humanities that should be identified and implemented for enhanced discoverability? 

• What are the unique requirements of research in the digital humanities? 

• Are there existing standards associated with information retrieval that might be adapted to better support the needs of those working in the digital humanities?

3:45pm - 4:15pm Moderated Roundtable Discussion

In this final segment of the program, participating speakers and attendees will discuss with moderator, Todd Carpenter, Executive Director of NISO, the possible, practical next steps that could be taken to address concerns uncovered throughout the course of the day.