Knowledge Is Power
- Dignity: A sense of pride in oneself and self-respect.
- The Digital Divide: From information to knowledge (Knowledge is power).
- The Barriers: Message delivery and bias attitudes (Access, Understanding, Knowledge).
- Designing For Dignity: Designing a functional room, building, smart city, or website, requires features that allow humans to perceive their environment and make decisions.
The Design Challenge
What design barriers impact your ability to access, understand, and act upon information?
Entering a dark room, a sighted person dependent upon visual cues, will be disoriented, but if handed a flashlight, will be able to probe the environment to build a virtual model of the room in their mind. If the room is designed with audible and tactile features a blind person using assistive tools will be able to probe the environment to build a virtual model of the space within their mind. Likewise, humans probe the internet communication services to find and access information, to assimilate and understand content, to gain knowledge and make smart decisions. The level of pride and self-respect in achieving this goal will depend upon the model of Universal Design. The Dignity challenge is to bridge the accessibility gap, through multiple means of representation, multiple means of expression, and multiple means of engagement, that will create the best possible end-user experience.