Digital Inclusion Statement (DTC 206)

(World Benchmarking Alliance)

At the beginning of the semester, I thought “Digital Inclusion” regarded everything online being easily accessible by anyone and everyone, but I couldn’t think of any specific examples besides the difference between drawing digitally and drawing with paper and pencil. While this is true, it’s quite vague, and doesn’t delve deep into what digital inclusion actually is.

Now, at the end of the semester, I’ve understood how digital inclusion involves how many people have access to the internet, the misrepresentation of women and historically marginalized people are online and in video games, how many people can’t use the internet because it’s not accessible to them and their disabilities, and the content moderation online is taught a specific way, but can be quite biased from person to person. The internet should be usable by everyone without them feeling like they either don’t belong, or like they’ll only be bullied and harassed online.

In my own experiences, being a woman online on multiple gaming forums or platforms has been frustrating and repulsive, to the point where I tend to only play single-player games, or never talk out loud when playing multiplayer. I’d like for a more open and accepting community, where women, people of color, and people part of the LGBTQ+ community are welcomed and accurately represented in the gaming industry. Too many times have there been online lobbies where people confidently scream slurs, sexual harassments, sexist phrases, and overall rude.

Promoting inclusivity involves standing up for people who are being brought down, bullied, harassed, or hurt to the point they don’t want to do the one thing they may enjoy in life. Gaming is meant to make people happy and connect with others who have similar interests, and people like these toxic gamers make that difficult. An easier way to report, ban, or mute people would make the avoidance of these unsafe situations easier to access and incorporate for people who just want to play the game.

In other situations, web developers who are in charge of making websites should put accessibility for the deaf, blind, and immobile to be able to use their websites and the internet in general. I remember, in class, we took some time to look at different restaurant sites and study if they would be accessible to everyone. While most of the sites lacked a text-to-speech reader for the blind, color-blind filters to help with colors, or even an option to make the font more spread out, there were some websites that had one, a few, all of these, or more available on their website, for anyone to use.

Finally, simply being able to access the internet from home has been a huge issue for families across our country. Growing up in a small town, and still living in the middle of nowhere, the best internet speeds my home could access were, minimum, 200kBps, and maximum, 1MBps. With no other internet service available in the area I lived in, completing homework, playing games with friends, or even trying to attend online classes throughout the pandemic was so frustratingly difficult. Not being able to complete assignments or learn/attend from online classes because my mom works from home and attends hourly meetings was a lot more work to plan hours around. I found myself driving to the local library for free and faster internet. I’m not alone in the issue. Cities, towns, and people experience this all over the United States. Where only one internet provider is available to them because providers split up locations, so these places only have one provider to choose from. This has been an issue for so long and the government or the service providers don’t plan to fix anything.

Overall, inclusion on the internet is still a piece of work. Whether it’s increasing internet access, being more respectful online, or making the internet an accessible platform, developers are also learning what it means to be more digitally inclusive. Learning everything we did in this class will only improve the knowledge of future developers and make the internet a more welcome place for everyone.