Episode 47- Assistive Technologies and Artificial Intelligence
0-0:12 Orthotonics Accessible as Gravity plays and fades out
0:13 Hello and welcome to Accessagogy a podcast about accessibility and pedagogy. I’m your host Ann Gagné and this podcast is recorded on land covered by the Upper Canada Treaties and within land protected by the Dish with One Spoon Wampum Agreement, which is the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe peoples.
0:34 Welcome to episode forty-seven. In today’s episode I want to explore something that I saw on LinkedIn the other day that made me realize from accessibility point of view that we really need to be having more conversations about this which is automated note takers in Zoom or virtual calls.
0:52 There was a post that Tolulope Noah put on LinkedIn about how she was noticing more and more in these sessions and wanted to see what others were thinking. And what kind of shocked about that post is the lack of inclusion in the responses to the post. Mainly a lot of folk right away went to the I don’t want to be recorded, which is very fair, but very few actually saw the possibilities of assistive technology in those tools.
1:23 So today I want to explore this complicated issue by giving three sides for you to consider when you and your space are making decisions about whether or not you will let automated note takers into a session you are facilitating.
1:36 Point One, which was very much articulated in the responses to Tolu’s post, which is that automated note takers do something to change the vulnerability and openness of the discussion. If the topic of the conversation is already something that would require vulnerability and openness, then knowing that everything is being recorded can change what people share or even shut down the conversation all together. And there’s another point which is that folk do not know where those notes are going to end up. And sadly we live in a time where things are taken out of context and shared in different spaces.
2:12 For difficult or vulnerable conversation spaces, we often create a set of engagement practices if you will collectively so that the participants know what to expect and what will happen if say a microaggression occurs. It’s very difficult to ask an Ai to abide by those engagement rules set by the participants in the space. So yes, definitely, automated note takers can be difficult to have in such spaces because the socio-political space and socio-historical times that we live in. This is similar to the real conversations that we had when the pandemic started, or at least the real conversations I had when the pandemic started, about what sessions would or would not be recorded. And is also similar to the conversations that I had about automated closed captioning on Zoom at the beginning of the pandemic.
3:02 Which brings me to point two, which is like, captions and transcripts, automated note takers are real assistive technologies for folk with different abilities and different disabilities related to hearing, cognition and banning them outright without a discussion basically is creating a barrier to their participation in those spaces. And I’ve had a few conversations with colleagues about this in the last few weeks and one mentioned well why can’t we ask them to declare why they need it at the beginning. And you know the thing is with that is that asking folk at the beginning of the session to explain why you need an automated note taker does a certain kind of disclosure work that is also very problematic. There needs to be a trust relationship there as well for someone to be even comfortable talking about that, and I need this to help me process, for example, I need this because it supports my ADHD, I’m not sure that other people in that space, should be open to that kind of disclosure.
4:03 So this again is a perfect example of access friction, right? There are folk who want to be in the space who need a certain kind of tool or technology for that space to be accessible to them, but the accessibility tool may in fact create other frictions with the participants in the room. For the longest time at the beginning of the pandemic getting folk to even turn on captions on Zoom felt like the hill that I was going to die on. Like my gravestone was gonna say quote “she is still asking many times for them to turn on captions.” End quote.
4:32 So what can be done is that maybe in the registration part of the session you can leave space for folk to say what accessibility supports are needed, like captions, transcripts and then be sure to communicate that to all participants before the session. This coupled with the sort of engagement rules that I mentioned previously could in fact support both the accessibility of the folk needing the support, and also the vulnerable conversations that could happen in the space.
4:58 But this also takes me to point three, which is, have you ever questioned why we’re seeing so many of these note taking bots in our virtual spaces now? And honestly sadly, in this triple booked calendar space that we live in, the use of these tools are very much in some cases motivated by this hyper-credentialing space that we’re in right now. People think that if they can demonstrate that they were at something, or write a reflection on a thing they were supposed to be at for professional development, but that also conflicts with say taking a parent to a doctor’s appointment, but they will still need that badge or whatever.
5:34 And this is a deeper ethos of higher education conversation. Like what are we rewarding? Is it the attendance or the relational participation? And what does relational participation look like? Is it the reflection that they can review when someone else said a thing and agree or disagree a few weeks later, or is it about being in the moment and having opportunities to bounce ideas. Like what is the topic and does that momentness matter? And if the momentness doesn’t matter then why is this not an asynchronous online professional development opportunity, right? There’s so many questions to be asked here about why it is that we are seeing that.
6:16 The use of these tools and the increase use of these tools has a pedagogical and organizational reason. You could and should take this as an opportunity to reflect on why things are designed the way that they are and choose, and you choose to reward and value.
6:33 So that’s it, that’s episode 47 of Accessagogy, with a discussion of automated note taker tools and how the answer to ban them out right is not as simple for some folk, not as simple as folk are making it out to be. And how this is something that needs to be part of your teaching and learning centre or your departmental discussions in terms of facilitation rules and supports for sessions that you’re running online.
6:57 Remember that I want this to be a space where you can ask questions and share concepts that you’d like me to discuss. So if there’s anything that I mentioned here, about different tools being used online and how they may impact participation and accessibility, please ask.
7:10 As always if you have any ideas or aspects of your pedagogy that you’d like me to address in this podcast, please feel free to send me an email at Accessagogy so that’s acc e ss a gogy at gmail dot com. I will try to include as many of these suggestions as possible in the podcast because ultimately, this podcast is for you. So that’s it, that’s episode 47 of Accessagogy, thanks so much for following along and asking how can I make my space more accessible today? Have a good week.