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		<!-- END ODIOGO LISTEN BUTTON v2.5.7 (WP) -->{"id":389,"date":"2009-05-29T15:30:58","date_gmt":"2009-05-29T15:30:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/slewth.wordpress.com\/?p=389"},"modified":"2009-05-29T15:30:58","modified_gmt":"2009-05-29T15:30:58","slug":"digital-rights-and-wrongs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/slewth.co.uk\/blog\/2009\/05\/29\/digital-rights-and-wrongs\/","title":{"rendered":"Digital Rights and Wrongs"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n\t\t<!-- BEGIN ODIOGO LISTEN BUTTON v2.5.7 (WP) -->\r\n\t\t<script type=\"text\/javascript\" language=\"javascript\">\r\n\t\t<!--\r\n\t\t\/\/ ODIOGO_START:do_NOT_remove_this_comment\r\n\t\tshowOdiogoReadNowButton (\"687068\", \"Digital Rights and Wrongs\", \"389\", 290, 55);\r\n\t\t\/\/ -->\r\n\t\t<\/script>\r\n\t\t<br\/>\r\n\t\t<script type=\"text\/javascript\" language=\"javascript\">\r\n\t\t<!--\r\n\t\tshowInitialOdiogoReadNowFrame (\"687068\", \"389\", 290, 0);\r\n\t\t\/\/ ODIOGO_END:do_NOT_remove_this_comment\r\n\t\t\/\/ -->\r\n\t\t<\/script>\r\n\t\t<!-- END ODIOGO LISTEN BUTTON v2.5.7 (WP) -->\r\n\t\t\n<p>With the European Elections fast approaching, the <a title=\"Open Rights Group\" href=\"http:\/\/www.openrightsgroup.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Open Rights Group<\/a> have asked UK candidates what they think about key digital rights issues such as online privacy, surveillance state, open internet and copyright reform.\u00a0 To view responses, visit the Open Rights Group <a title=\"Open Rights Group EU Election pages\" href=\"http:\/\/euelection.openrightsgroup.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">EU Election pages<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The Open Rights Group is a grassroots technology organisation which exists to protect civil liberties wherever they are threatened by the poor implementation and regulation of digital technology.\u00a0 This is an important area for advocacy and got me thinking. When we consider digital rights \u2013 particularly Internet access as a human right &#8211; government action to ensure equitable internet access and close digital divides appears straightforward.\u00a0 However, the intersection between the internet and disabled people <em>as users<\/em> is not the sum, total interface between digital infrastructure and disability.<\/p>\n<p>Last year at the biennial <a title=\"Disability Studies Association conference 2008\" href=\"http:\/\/www.lancs.ac.uk\/fass\/events\/disabilityconference_archive\/2008\/index.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Disability Studies Association<\/a> conference in Lancaster (UK), Australian academic <a href=\"http:\/\/ssis.arts.unsw.edu.au\/staff\/staff.php?first=Helen&amp;last=Meekosha\">Dr Helen Meekosha<\/a> presented the keynote <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.lancs.ac.uk\/fass\/events\/disabilityconference_archive\/2008\/papers\/meekosha%202008.doc\">Contextualizing disability: developing southern\/global theory<\/a>. <\/em>This paper advocated global perspectives on disability, challenging gaps in western\/northern disability discourse.\u00a0\u00a0 Meekosha observes that global levels of disability are not a given, they are dependent on factors such as war, disaster, economics and climate change.\u00a0 In view of this, the decisions made by elected governments on defence, trade, international aid and the environment have repercussions for levels of disability around the world.\u00a0 I would argue that digital legislation is bound into this policy ecology.\u00a0 For example, in environmental terms\u2026 (I&#8217;m thinking of <a title=\"Nicolas Carr on SL Carbon Footprint\" href=\"http:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/archives\/2006\/12\/avatars_consume.php\" target=\"_blank\">Nicolas Carr<\/a>\u2019s assertion that the average <a title=\"Second Life\" href=\"http:\/\/www.secondlife.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Second Life<\/a> avatar consumes as much energy as the average Brazillian and the revelations that the CO2 emissions of the ICT industry outstrip aviation) \u2026green computing could be concieved as a human rights and disability issue.<\/p>\n<p>However, Meekosha identifies more direct causal effects relating technology and disability, specifically through outsourcing to &#8216;eSweatshops&#8217;.\u00a0 She also observes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Disability scholars rarely venture into this territory &#8211; leaving these issues to scholars in feminism and international development.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Citing the excellent article &#8216;<a title=\"Sweatshop article\" href=\"http:\/\/chronicle.com\/free\/v48\/i09\/09a03501.htm\" target=\"_blank\">A New Front in the Sweatshop Wars?<\/a>&#8216; by Farrell &amp; Olsen, (2001) Meekosha highlights the emergence of eSweatshops, dedicated to data processing, as a physically damaging, disabling environments.\u00a0 Farrell and Olsen scope high-profile academic digitisation projects that have been sub-contracted to countries such as Barbados, India, Mexico and Cambodia whilst observing the lack of any regulation.\u00a0 In one instance they describe disabled people targeted for employment by a Harvard sub-contractor.\u00a0 This is a complex area of competing interests, deftly handled by Farrell and Olsen. More recent literature from organisations such as <a title=\"CAFOD\" href=\"http:\/\/www.cafod.org.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\">Cafod<\/a> focuses on manufacturing sweatshops, for ICTs and software. It&#8217;s a reminder that digital resources, tools and structures can infringe rights and create impairment, outside traditional views of inaccessible systems and accessibility discourse.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\r\n\t\t<!-- BEGIN ODIOGO LISTEN BUTTON v2.5.7 (WP) -->\r\n\t\t<script type=\"text\/javascript\" language=\"javascript\">\r\n\t\t<!--\r\n\t\t\/\/ ODIOGO_START:do_NOT_remove_this_comment\r\n\t\tshowOdiogoReadNowButton (\"687068\", \"Digital Rights and Wrongs\", \"389\", 290, 55);\r\n\t\t\/\/ -->\r\n\t\t<\/script>\r\n\t\t<br\/>\r\n\t\t<script type=\"text\/javascript\" language=\"javascript\">\r\n\t\t<!--\r\n\t\tshowInitialOdiogoReadNowFrame (\"687068\", \"389\", 290, 0);\r\n\t\t\/\/ ODIOGO_END:do_NOT_remove_this_comment\r\n\t\t\/\/ -->\r\n\t\t<\/script>\r\n\t\t<!-- END ODIOGO LISTEN BUTTON v2.5.7 (WP) -->\r\n\t\t\n<p>With the European Elections fast approaching, the Open Rights Group have asked UK candidates what they think about key digital rights issues such as online privacy, surveillance state, open internet and copyright reform.\u00a0 To view responses, visit the Open Rights Group EU Election pages. The Open Rights Group is a grassroots technology organisation which exists [&hellip;]<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10,11,33],"tags":[55,60,65],"class_list":["post-389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-affairs","category-disability","category-webtech","tag-democracy","tag-digital-rights","tag-disability-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/slewth.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/slewth.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/slewth.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slewth.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slewth.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/slewth.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/slewth.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slewth.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slewth.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}