Access

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July 30, 2015

¶ 1 Leave a comment on paragraph 1 0 Below are a list of questions and suggestions to consider when developing digital humanities projects. These questions address issues of access, with the understanding that the provisional categories articulated here are imperfect and overlapping.

¶ 2 Leave a comment on paragraph 2 2 Who will be able to view or access the project? How will this work circulate?

• ¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0
• Will project staff, participants, and students have access?
• Can members of communities represented in or affected by the project access it?
• What kinds of access or restrictions are conditions of funding bodies involved?
• What are the social justice implications of open access (OA)? Take a look at Stuart Lawson’s work on the topic, as well as Martin Eve’s work developing the Open Library of the Humanities.

¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 How accessible is the project for people with disabilities?

• ¶ 5 Leave a comment on paragraph 5 0
• Jennifer Guiliano and George Williams’ ProfHacker post “Accessibility and the Digital Humanities” identifies the stakes for accessibility in digital humanities.
• George Williams provides advice for evaluating your website for accessibility and discusses accessibility for Web writers.
• Check the accessibility of a webpage or digital project using the Wave web accessibility tool.

¶ 6 Leave a comment on paragraph 6 0 How accessible is the project in low-bandwidth environments?

• ¶ 7 Leave a comment on paragraph 7 1
• The GO::DH Minimal Computing Working Group is dedicated to developing computing practices with accessibility, sustainability, and minimalism in mind. Check out the Minimal Computing webpage.
• The Around DH in 80 Days project uses static HTML generated with Jekyll, instead of Flash or a database-driven CMS, so it will load more easily in low-bandwidth environments.
• Alex Gil and Dennis Tenen of Columbia University’s Group for Experimental Methods in the Humanities have developed a Jekyll template called “No Connect” that works on a local machine or USB key without an HTML server.
• Web Design Guidelines for Low Bandwidth

¶ 8 Leave a comment on paragraph 8 0 How is project licensed and distributed?

• ¶ 9 Leave a comment on paragraph 9 0
• What can people do with the project? What should they be able to do?
• What are the implications of Creative Commons and GNU licenses?
• What forms of access does the selected license offer and foreclose?
• Can we rethink existing licenses and develop new ones to reflect alternative notions of ownership? The decolonial license, for example, builds on existing attributes of Creative Commons licensing and a theoretical model rooted in decolonization. What would a license that grants reparations to an affected community or recognizes native peoples’ sovereignty look like?

¶ 10 Leave a comment on paragraph 10 0 What language(s) or language register(s) does the project use? Does that limit who can access the project?

• ¶ 11 Leave a comment on paragraph 11 0
• The Multi-Lingualism and Multi-Culturalism Committee of the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations (ADHO) addresses matters of linguistic diversity in digital humanities.
• Élika Ortega was the driving force behind the whispering campaign at Digital Humanities 2014 in Lausanne and has written about multilingualism in digital humanities.
• Isabel Galina has spoken to the challenges of geographic and linguistic diversity in digital humanities.
• Domenico Fiormonte has undertaken analysis of language and citationality in digital humanities, identifying an alarming trend towards a monoculture that privileges Anglophone scholarship.