| Transcriber: |
Randy Lee (rxl_98@yahoo.com) |
| Brief Bio: |
|
| Date finished: |
April 6, 2005 |
| Proofreader: |
Shu-Jung Chan |
| Brief Bio: |
Fourth year music student in University of Free State, South Africa |
| Date finished: |
24 July 2005 |
Hello! My name is Brenda Matthis. I'm an assistant professor at Lesley
University, in School of Education in the Technology and Education Division.
I'm also president of Matthis Brothers Software Pathology, and we examine
websites and software for unfair outcomes. And The lection I'll be giving is
about biases in software and websites. We're looking at, well,as I call it "other
side of the screen." You know, what's on the other of this screen? Who are the
people who made the decisions? And what are the decisions were made about design
and how it affects us as users?
There're about three key points that I'm going to bring up in the lecture. The
first one is talks about text and graphics.[0:50]Text and graphics is a very very big
issue because it affects mostly everyone who uses software and websites. Basically what I'm
talking about is about accessibility for those who need bigger text,
those who have low vision and those who are blind.[1.07]
One of the major issues about websites is that they become more and more
graphic-oriented, so there're more pictures, and that's very wonderful, except
if you can't see them or you just can't navigate through them. And many many
people, not only in United States but in other countries, use text-to-speech
reader. [1:25] When you've have text-to-speech reader, and it comes across a website
that has graphics, most likely it's not going to be able to read those graphics;
It'll just say "graphics", so you really don't know what's going on. But if you
have a website that has picture with graphics, and then there is text
information hidden behind the graphics, so that the text reader, text-to-speech
reader, knows and says to you "oh, this is a "This is a picture of the tents
in London." Then that really helps the person to understand what's going on and
also the person has vision to can see what's going on. [2:06]
Another alternative to that issue is having two versions: a text revision and a
graphics revision. Let me show you an example of that. One of the people who've
done a good job about that is Stephen Hawking, a famous scientist. Now Before
you go to his website, he has this page that says: "Welcome to Professor Stephen
W. Hawking's web pages." And "These pages have been designed to make your access
to the information as straight forward as possible." This is a very key
statement, because he's actually saying to you explicitly: "We know what the
issues are, and we want to make sure you that you gain information that's best
for you." Partly because, Stephen Hawking is disabled himself, and has a lot of
accessible tools to help him.[2:52] I think he's also thinking about his
audience. But many other people are also thinking in the same way. So let's look
what we've have when you go to the graphic version. You have the graphic version.
[3:02] You have all the pictures, and all the beautiful graphics and
hyperlinks which you probably would not be able to use if you have a vision
impairment or are blind, and actually the texts are very small, too. I have to
write to them about that. However if we go to the text-only version here,[3:25]
and you see it's all in text. what you see would be text only. Now I apologize to you as my text-to-speech software
is not working today, but I'll show you in an example of this in the lecture
itself. [3:37]But what'll happen is that the text-to-speech reader will read
each of these lines and read out and loud, the person will be able to see and
hear everything that's on the graphical part of that page. So that's a wonderful
thing. [3:50]
Another important issue is language. and There're two issues about language: one
in terms of software, the other one in terms of websites. In terms of websites, most websites
are in English because most of the websites they are based in United States. But
there're many many more websites coming up in different parts of the world, and
they want to make sure they address English speaking audiences as well as their
own audiences. So many websites are now becoming bilingual, trilingual,
multilingual, you find many websites that have different languages, [4:26] most
of those websites are not based in United Sates. So, the point is that if you
have a website, remember that many many of your audience members are not in
United States, there're many people surfing who are they're not in the US [4:43]. And
Also many people in US who actually have different languages as their mother-
languages will greatly appreciate it having websites that having information in
different languages for them [4:54]. This is the very key issue. It also talks
about digital device and accessibility, which we will talk a little bit in the
class as well.[5:01]
Another issue about language is software. Now, let me give you a specific
example. In the recent years, I've been researching educational software for
children. And, several years ago, I did a small study about educational software
for children of top 10 selling software in school in the math category. [5:26]
Of those top 10 selling titles, most all of them didn't have English and another
language: they only had one language. And then, if they did have another
language, it was not totally in that second language. It will be in Spanish,
maybe in will have French, but it will have English for navigation. So that sets the
message that, you know, it's not fully bilingual, and maybe we don't need to
have everything in Spanish or English, maybe it was perhaps an oversight, but it
happensed all the time. [6:03] So, it is sort of a key issue for children to make
sure that, and for adult actually, to make sure when you use software that has
more than one languages, that it has to be completely in each language. [6:17]
Another issue about software is about gender. Specifically about educational
software, gender is a big issue.[6:29] In the same study I looked at, the top 10
selling math software, I and found that most of the titles did not have girls
represented, or girls represented in ancillary way. They're in the background,
but they were not part of the action. They were not speaking; they were just
really graphics. [6:48] And so that sends the message to young girls, especially
in such a crucial situation where children are going into 6th grade or starting
to have more interests in different topics, and girls generally check out of math.
[7:04] And here you have math software that does not show girls participating in
math, and that sends a message. [7:10] So there is a bias there; a bias towards
boys or a bias againsts girls, again.
And, so you have to look at a lot of different things for websites and softwares.
You have to look at gender; you have to look at nationality, language,
accessibility, so many different issues.[7:28] So the questions become how do
you address all those issues? How do you know about them? One of the excited
things about the answer to that question is that many software designers,
software developers, web designers, are now being specifically trained, either
in the workplace or in educational institution, on how to support different
types of users by design, [7:55] and also to look at the ethics behind the
design; not only the graphical interface, but also what is the logic in the
software. [8:04] The other issue, other big important changes happening is
consumers are starting to become more aware. Parents and teachers, as well as and just
general consumers are looking at "what's this software offer me? If I'm
speaking Spanish and English, is the software in Spanish and English? If I'm
going to use it for my child, are there different type of children being
represented?" I have several parents who come to me on a regular basis asking me: "
What software out there that will be fun for my child, but also is not bias
towards just having you know just kid of one nationality represented.[8:43] I
want my child to be of the world in real life, and I want them to be of the
world when they use the software. What's out there?" [8:50] So people becoming
more and more aware of this, and we're gonna talk about this and other issues in
the class, and I look forward to having conversation with you. I'll see you then.
Comments:
Last Modified 7/24/05 4:58 PM
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