Reflections from Class

Looking back on this quarter and my experiences working with Casa Latina, the two themes that stuck out to me is digital divide and women leadership. Digital divide is something I have always had an interest in. I even thought of incorporating it into my CHI Competition submission, for the theme this year was "Appropriating Technologies for New Cultures". The project asked us to “showcase your best abilities of "maker cultures" to build new connections and to make less-voiced cultures be better heard.” Although it isn’t entirely related to the Casa Latina work we were doing, a reading that I did for this class highlighted some aspects of the competition.

Author Alysa Hullett of “Why more women in leadership will mean few women in poverty” emphasizes how the spreading of resources among underrepresented communities is important for giving a voice to communities and organizations such as Casa Latina. She states how people have “failed to speak up about wage theft in the past due to fear and a ‘lack of power’.” Some things can be improved though by informing workers of their labor rights in the United States, and letting them know that claims can be filed. This is just one example how resources can be a game player in giving the voice necessary for change.

From here you think about the “digital divide” notion in America, and wonder how this plays a role in being a barrier to that voice that is needed. How prominent is this digital divide within various communities in America, not just Casa Latina? This class has left me wondering about other identities that face a digital divide. What about people with disabilities, or those within the LGBTQ community? What about someone who is a minority and a citizen versus someone who is a minority and a non-resident, or undocumented?

There is also the questions I have about women leadership in America. The same author, Alysa Hullett, brought up some interesting statistics about women leadership and women poverty in America. She also popped some questions in my head, such as who is responsible for this poverty? Who can change this? Are they groups, or are they individuals? Surely there are some solutions (which would take time to implement), but what solutions or action steps would be right ones?

It was great to looking around and seeing the women leadership happening in Casa Latina. It was also great seeing the true meaning of “community” and “family” take place right in front of you. I remember at one workshop, one of the women’s husband ended up joining us and that was awesome! I didn’t expect a husband to want to be a part of the workshop, and for him to be interested and a part of the conversation was great. It reminded me of a conversation I had with a couple of the women on a different day. We were talking about how it would be great if some of the men joined us. It is much more about the women at the workshop, it is also about their allies, their supporters, their family, and their friends. Together, change can happen. Together we can holistically look at what is going on around us and understand what can be done to change current situations. I would be interested to see how support networks vary from community to community, and what happens if there is no personal support network available.

Walking away from this I am left with so many questions. It was a great experience overall, and the stories that were shared allowed me to understand the articles we were reading even more, and see the power that exists in available resources and support networks.

Letter to my Calendar

Dear Calendar,

Although you and I have never really been close up until now, I want to thank you for keeping me in check on my activities throughout the day. I actually would like to also thank myself for being more proactive about it as well. I used to be more of a “got it in my head” type of guy, but grad-school (as we all know) is a completely different ball game.

Throughout the year I have taken steps to better myself as a whole, and take on new challenges. Grad-school was a new leaf for me, and I really learned what it meant to prioritize and make the most of whatever was going on around us. In the EDUC 401 course, we started off with an article about reading in grad-school. You are given a wild list of readings in each class, some required- most recommended. After reading through the syllabus and the reading list, you are able to take a look and see what exactly you need to walk away with, and prioritize in a way that gives you the maximum amount of value in the little time you do have. You don’t have to read every word of every article given, and that is a learning lesson I actually enacted this year. When I was in business school, I freaked out in my accounting program if I even missed a chapter of any assigned readings. This year I was able to take a step back and re-evaluate the way I handle the infinitely long reading list.

This thinking can be applied to everyday life as well. There are only 24 hours in a day. For me, it is scary to think about the thought. I work as professional staff at UW, am a full-time grad, volunteer weekly with Gay City, and still desire to go to the gym 4 times a week minimally. All while ensuring I get my homework done, and cook all my meals (trying to eat more healthyJ), and trying to maintain a decent social life of course, and attend community/networking/campus events. It’s another thing that I am a neat freak and have to have my apartment spotless. Sometimes I have to let that slide though because I am too busy running around. This is why I have managed to keep a good schedule for myself and write in times not just for class or homework, but also times that I dedicate to working out, and even having the needed downtime “me time.” Prioritizing sleep is another thing I feel I have successfully done. I block out my weeknights after 10:30 (with very few exceptions) so I can make sure I have time to get ready for the next morning, and get ready to go to bed. This new time tracking and allocation system has managed to keep me constantly going, and seems to be working well for me. It’s funny to think that there’s reminders such as “you need to do this at this time.” This at least has allowed me to stay on things. If there is an assignment coming up that is of very high stakes, I send myself a couple reminders to keep track of the deadline. I try not to procrastinate, but it’s something us students are best at :P

Moving forward, I will continue to appreciate you. You have never failed me, or intentionally threw me off schedule. If it seems like I can’t make up my mind and change appointments around 50 million times a day, I am sorry! Also, sorry for silencing you so much. You tend to go off at the worst times, like that one time I was in a meeting with the Associate Vice-Provost of Academic Services (my boss’s boss), and Vice President and CIO of UW-IT (his boss). Did make a good laugh though! :D

Let’s keep on being awesome,

Freddy

2/18/15, Federal Way Library, Freddy Mora

Location: Federal Way Public Library
Date: Feb. 18th, 2015
Time: 5: 00 PM-7:00 PM

 

Reflection:

It was nice to be back at the Federal Way Public Library. As always, the staff members were very welcoming. Edna goes out of her way to make everyone feel at home there, and I notice how this branch is a community of its own.  It was great talking to Edna and hearing more about her background. Also nice to hear she is a UW alumni, and from the I-School! She sounds like she identifies well with the work that Casa Latina is doing, and I am sure she is one who would love to keep on partnering with this project.

 Throughout the work shop, I walked around and observed how people were interacting with one another, and with the resources that were available. Edna was working with a mom and daughter in ensuring she was knowledgeable of the free resources available to her, form scholarships to academic tutoring. The mom was very excited to hear all of that, especially. It was nice to see the kids playing on the tablets and interacting with the games. They really enjoyed a counting game that had you count the ingredients you needed (mushrooms, carrots, etc.) and upon getting a math problem right, you completed the recipe. Then they headed over to story time, which they were hesitant at first, for they were having too much fun with the tablets! It was a good chill day where people got to do their thing and ask any questions they had, and have us come in and help them find an answer J

2/4/15, Federal Way Library, Freddy Mora

Location: Federal Way Public Library
Date: Feb. 4th, 2015
Time: 5: 00 PM-7:00 PM

Reflection:

It was interesting to check out another Seattle Public Library (or in this case, a Federal One). I have only been to the downtown and University District Locations. Every staff member was welcoming. The place was quite large, and very well maintained and organized.

The presentation that Edna and the interpreter gave was very informative. The women seemed to enjoy it. I even learned some new things myself, like how you can request a book to be transferred to a different branch for you! I liked looking around the rooms and seeing how eager the women were to learn. Sarah gave a great presentation, and allowed for time to have the women interact with tables and follow alongside with her. I was curious to know from what areas the other women (who didn’t drive down with us) were from. What topics were they hoping to have covered? Are they interested in future workshops?

 

Evaluating the Accessibility of our Online Presence

One goal of this project is to help expose more underrepresented groups to the world of information technology. If our online presence is not easily accessible by people with visual impairments, issues with motor functionality, and other attributes that require special methods to get information from the web, then we are failing these overarching goals of accessibility.

A common tool used for internet-accessibility is a screen reader. These programs scan the HTML and CSS of web pages and read their content aloud for the user to hear. One of the most important aspects of web accessibility is building pages that can essentially 'play well' with these accessibility tools.

Several online services have the ability to access a website's accessibility: The website accessibility evaluation tool (or WAVE for short), and AChecker. Freddy and I used these to evaluate the three main websites we use for this project. Their results and commentary are as follows:

LatinaTech.org

Our website has a few errors in terms of accessibility. For users that need screen readers, alt-text for elements is necessary to describe pictures. None of the images on our website have alt-text, however, this is a fairly easy fix and will not take long to remedy.

The other main issue with latinatech.org is the contrast ratio of some text elements on the background. The design language of this website (links are orange + underlined) does not follow the 1:4.5 ratio of background to text color on some elements (mostly external links). To fix this, we would need to pick a different color to make all of the links on our page. This will take a bit longer than fixing the image alt-texts, but  it will be beneficial for users that have poor eyesight.

Casa-Latina.org

Many of the issues that LatinaTech.org had hold true for this website as well. None of the images have alt-text, which makes understanding the content difficult for users that cannot view images (or understand their significance).

The administrators of casa-latina.org can remedy this by modifying the HTML markup that makes up the site. This is not difficult for any web-savvy person to accomplish as long as they have access to the source code (which we do not)html tab
.

LatinaTech.blogspot.com

I am actually impressed with how few accessibility errors our blog has. Freddy’s accessibility reports only pointed out two different kinds of errors: The HTML document language is not specified, and the alt-texts for the little ‘edit’ pencil icons are not written. For any non-administrative user, they will never encounter these icons, so we need not take action here. I can fiddle with the HTML backend of our blog and try to fix the language header soon. Hopefully this will help users with visual impairments and screen-readers.


Tools used:
http://wave.webaim.org/

http://achecker.ca/checker/index.php

1/28/15 , Casa Latina, Adult Literacy Workshop, Freddy Mora

 

Location: Casa Latina, Seattle

Date: 1/28/15

Time: 5:00-7:00 PM

 

Last week at Casa Latina was an interesting one. The woman seemed eager to get started, and it was interesting to hear about their Craigslist experience. I ended up working with one individual who needed help with her email. She stated that she needed to send out an email, but was offline, so she drafted it and waited later to send it out. She pulled it up for me and stated that she needed to paste it into the body of another email as well. She asked if I could help with this and I agreed. I wanted to pop up this draft in another window to make things easier, and when I went to do so, the original draft disappeared. She got upset immediately, and I felt terrible. I could tell how important that email was to her so I spent the remainder of the workshop trying to figure out what had happened. To this very day, I still don’t know. What was interesting is I never got a “pop up” box stating I was to discard the email, and if I wish to proceed with what I was doing… So I was so confused as to what had happened. Moving forward I will be more cautious as to what I am assisting with.

 

In the past I have enjoyed helping out the women with any side questions they had. In one workshop I spent that time setting up her Kindle for her and showing the woman how it works. It was quite the learning experience for me too, for I have never used a Kindle before. I am looking forward to the next session of Casa Latina, since this time we will be at the library!