This is Me: Digital Identities

Your Digital Identity is everything you create on the Web, but also what other people might say about you there. Photographs on social networking sites, logs of chatroom conversations, newspaper articles about your role in a play, or your sporting victory. Even if you don't post material to the Web yourself, there is a good chance somebody else does, and we believe it is worth knowing about some of the issues. This workbook is designed to help you raise your level of awareness and to think about some of the ways your DI might be affected. There are two workbooks linked here; one for students generally and one for students studying for the health professions.

Digital accessibility challenges: the impact of locality, usability and technology

Abstract: It is estimated that 1 in 5 will, at some point in their lives, experience a long-term illness or disability that will impact their day to day lives. Access to digital information and technologies can be life changing and a necessity to fully participate in education, work and society. Specialist assistive technologies, such as screen readers, have been available for many years and are now built-into operating systems and devices. In addition, web accessibility standards have been compiled and published since the advent of the World Wide Web over two decades ago. However, internet use by people with disabilities continues to lag significantly behind those with no disability and use of assistive technologies remains lower than should be the case with tools often abandoned. In this seminar we will talk about our work to identify digital accessibility challenges; the barriers experienced by those with disabilities and how computer scientists can play a part in removing obstacles to access and ease of use. We will discuss some of our projects focussing on: • Development of assistive technologies for niche groups of users, • improving accessibility standards to cover a wider range of disabilities, • creating accessibility training resources for developers and stakeholders • embedding accessibility practice within development projects.