IGF 2018 WS #127
Digital Inclusion and Accessibility through ICTs

Organizer 1: Yuhyun Park, DQ Institute
Organizer 2: Holly Brown, IEEE

Speaker 1: Yuhyun Park, Civil Society, Asia-Pacific Group
Speaker 2: Melissa Sassi, Private Sector, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)
Speaker 3: Dudley Stephen Wyber, Civil Society, Western European and Others Group (WEOG)

Moderator

Holly Schneider Brown

Online Moderator

Jim Wendorf

Rapporteur

Justin Caso

Format

Panel - 90 Min

Interventions

All of the speakers will have an opportunity to speak in a dialog with the moderator for five to seven minutes to express their viewpoints on the issues. In addition, the speakers will be limited to a maximum of one slide in order to facilitate dialog. The final sixty minutes of the session will be a moderated discussion with the panelists and both remote and in situ audience participants.

Diversity

The confirmed panelists represent varying geographic regions including North America, Europe and Asia. The gender balance of the confirmed panelists includes two women and one man. In addition, we expect to add an additional panelist that is a student or young professional.

As more of the world’s population become connected to ICTs, the need to ensure that everyone has the possibility to develop the skills, knowledge, behaviors and confidence necessary to realize the potential of digital technologies becomes more pressing. While many will find their way easily in a digital world, many others will find this much harder. In particular, persons with disabilities as well as educational and health professionals working in resource constrained environments face a greater urgency for these skills. In much the same way basic literacy enables people to learn, communicate and create, digital literacy is an enabler of personal and community development. As such, digital literacy has been recognized as a duty of governments, both nationally and internationally to advance individual and community-level social, political and economic prosperity.

Moving forward, there is an important need for tools that will help ensure that digital literacy receives the attention and investment it deserves in the context both of domestic and overseas development policies including the establishment of a standardized definition and taxonomy so that the articulation and coordination of efforts becomes more holistic and coordinated. This session will discuss possible endeavors to achieve these goals through such activities as identifying best practices and making progress towards metrics, stakeholders and interested parties including governments, schools, private sector, and other community anchors such as libraries can work to improve the effectiveness of their work in this area in order to achieve a more inclusive internet and digital economy for the global population.

Agenda:
- Setting the stage (moderator) – 5 minutes
- Moderated discussion with panelists – 25 minutes
- Moderated interactive dialog between panelists and with both online and in situ audience members - 60 minutes

Each panelist will have a facilitated discussion with the moderator for approximately five to seven minutes followed by a brief discussion amongst the moderator and the panelists for a total of thirty minutes. The remaining sixty minutes will be dedicated to an interactive dialog, which will be facilitated by the onsite moderator, with the online and in situ participants working closely with the remote moderator to ensure full online participation.

The session will address the need to ensure that everyone has the possibility to develop the skills, knowledge, behaviors and confidence necessary to realize the potential of digital technologies. The session will build upon the work currently being undertaken by the IEEE, IFLA, Microsoft, and the DQ Institute to establish a standardized definition and taxonomy so that the articulation and coordination of efforts becomes more holistic and coordinated.

Online Participation

The remote moderator will engage with the remote participants to ensure that they become an active part of the session. The remote moderator will act as the remote participants physical representative in the session to guarantee that the remote participants to fully engage in the session.