The following is bibliography of what I read and listened to throughout the year.

 

 

1. “#99 Black Hole, New Jersey | Reply All,” Gimlet, accessed June 2, 2019, https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/5whmxd.

Podcast on a bizarre company that poses as a shipping stop but in reality steals packages and sends them to Europe. Podcast brings to light some of the problems with security and trust over the internet and how it can be hard to recover items and press charges against these types of companies

 

2. “#104 The Case of the Phantom Caller | Reply All,” Gimlet, accessed June 2, 2019, https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/n8ho3a.

A massive computer program scapes internet for phone numbers and makes hundreds of thousands of phone calls a day. Uses strange noises to mask calls. Program targets 1-800 numbers. Cost of call is charged to company and then shared with phone companies that helped connect this call. The software was traced back to a scam company that would always play a small part in these calls, therefore earning money.

 

3. “#109 Is Facebook Spying on You? | Reply All,” Gimlet, accessed June 2, 2019, https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/z3hlwr.

Interesting podcast that did a good job of highlighting people’s fears with facebook and there reasoning for why they think they are seeing targeted adds. After listening, I am still convinced that facebook is in fact not using mobile devices to listen to conversations.

 

4. “#112 The Prophet | Reply All,” Gimlet, accessed June 2, 2019, https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/j4hl36.

This podcast does a good job of highlighting some of the issues around using social media as a platform for mass bullying.

 

5. “#115 The Bitcoin Hunter | Reply All,” Gimlet, accessed June 2, 2019, https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/z3hl9r.

Super Tech Support episode that delves into some of the problems with crypto and how difficult it can be to track it and access it if you lose a password.

 

6. “#123 An Ad for the Worst Day of Your Life | Reply All,” Gimlet, accessed June 2, 2019, https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/8whoek.

I had always wondered who was responsible for the clickbait ads and why they are a thing. Through this podcast I discovered that there a two main companies that are responsible for almost all of the clickbait adds we see on the internet which is absurd. I also found it interesting to learn about the payment structure between these add companies and the websites (like new york times) that display them.

 

7. “#127 The Crime Machine, Part I | Reply All,” Gimlet, accessed June 2, 2019, https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/o2hx34.

Part one of a podcast that tells the origin story of the system used by the NYPD to lower the crime rate in NYC. One of the effects of this system is increased racial profiling and ticket quotas.

 

8. “#128 The Crime Machine, Part II | Reply All,” Gimlet, accessed June 2, 2019, https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/n8hwl7.

Part two of a podcast that tells the origin story of the system used by the NYPD to lower the crime rate in NYC. One of the effects of this system is increased racial profiling and ticket quotas.

9. “#130 The Snapchat Thief | Reply All,” Gimlet, accessed June 2, 2019, https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/v4he6k.

This podcast takes a dive into the blackmarket hacking world of social media accounts. Hackers use weaknesses in phone number security and the obliviousness of servuce providers as an entry point into getting login information. Hackers then either hold this info for ransom, black mailing, or selling to other hackers

 

10. “#135 Robocall: Bang Bang | Reply All,” Gimlet, accessed June 2, 2019, https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/awhk76.

Interesting podcast that details the rise of robo calls. This was my first introduction into how insecure phone numbers are and how easy it is for companies to track your location via a phone number.

 

11. “#136 The Founder | Reply All,” Gimlet, accessed June 2, 2019, https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/dvhd9k.

This podcast talks about a relatively unknown person who used the internet to commit crimes on a global scale. He starts in the black market pharmaceutical business and eventually hires his own private army and hitman. Eventually this leads to his downfall.

 

12. “#138 The Great Momo Panic | Reply All,” Gimlet, accessed June 2, 2019, https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/j4h6jd.

social media craze where digital figure convinces children to do things. Eventually leads to digital figure “momo” telling children to commit suicide. Podcast brings up questions on how to protect children in the age of social media. It seems like there is fine line between using social media to benefit your children vs having it harm them. How do parents makes this decision?

 

13. “#140 The Roman Mars Mazda Virus | Reply All,” Gimlet, accessed June 2, 2019, https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/brh8jm.

silly podcast that bring up an interesting problem. Certain podcasts are unable to be played in a particular car because of characters in the title of the podcast. These problamatic characters cause the program playing the podcast to crash and make the episode unplayable.

 

14. “#141 Adam Pisces and the $2 Coke | Reply All,” Gimlet, accessed June 2, 2019, https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/z3hgd2.

This podcast talks about a problem plagueing dominoes stores across the U.S. Mysterious online orders under the name “Adam Pisces” for $2 coke come into stores across the U.S. It is unknown what the cause of this is. Some people think they are coming from hackers that are testing dominoes internal security for weaknesses, some think its credit card thiefs testing stolen cards, while others think it is coming internally from Dominoes.

 

15. “#142 We Didn’t Start The Fire | Reply All,” Gimlet, accessed May 26, 2019, https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/gmhr36.

Podcast talks about multiple things happening in the world specifically inside jokes happening on social media. The group deciphers a confusing tweet that references things happening in deep internet culture.

 

16. Jonathan Albright, “#Election2016: Propaganda-Lytics & Weaponized Shadow Trackers,” Medium (blog), November 22, 2016, https://medium.com/@d1gi/election2016-propaganda-lytics-weaponized-shadow-trackers-a6c9281f5ef9.

This article details an experiment into news sites and how insecure they are. The author of this article wrote a program that visited over 100 news sites that had interest in the 2016 election and scraped the mechanisms that were tracking peoples navigation of them. He found that many of these sites are not safe and held a lot of third-party software trackers that could easily be used by others for nefarious reasons.

 

17. Jesse Hausler, “7 Things Every Designer Needs to Know about Accessibility,” Medium (blog), April 15, 2015, https://medium.com/salesforce-ux/7-things-every-designer-needs-to-know-about-accessibility-64f105f0881b.

A great introductory article into some of things keep in mind when design accessible web applications. Some of the key takeaways from this article were do not use color as the only way to convey a certain piece of information. Be wary of building forms. The biggest takeaway was the that accessibility is not a barrier to innovation.

 

18. Lily Hay Newman, “Facebook Broadens Its Bug Bounty to Help Fix Third-Party Apps,” Wired, September 17, 2018, https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-bug-bounty-third-party-apps/.

This article gives a brief history of Facebooks bug bounty program which launched in 2011 and details a new initiative that will allow researchers to submit vulnerabilities in the third-party apps that it uses. Reading this article made me ask the question: Why has it taken 7 years for this become a thing? It seems like this addition to the program is in response in the Facebook’s recent bad press rather than step they took on their own. The article also mentions that they will only accept submissions that were found while passively using a third-party service. This means that vulnerabilities uncovered through malicious activity (a very common way to discover  vulnerabilities) will not be accepted. To me it seems like they could be doing more.

 

19. “Facebook’s A.I. Whiz Now Faces the Task of Cleaning It Up. Sometimes That Brings Him to Tears. – The New York Times,” accessed May 26, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/17/technology/facebook-ai-schroepfer.html.

 

This article describes the story of Facebook’s Mike Schroepfer the current CTO of facebook. It goes into detail on his journey through the ranks of facebook and some of the things he has been a part of and some things he has been responsible for. It also goes into depth on his reaction to facebook being used to post violent disturbing content and how much of an effect it has had on him. What is the main goal of this article?

 

20. “Google’s New Voice Recognition System Works Instantly and Offline (If You Have a Pixel),” TechCrunch (blog), accessed April 22, 2019, http://social.techcrunch.com/2019/03/12/googles-new-voice-recognition-system-works-instantly-and-offline-if-you-have-a-pixel/.

This article is about NLP and google’s new voice recognition system for its pixel phone. Google came up with a way from their voice system to work instantly. This is an important breakthrough in NLP because network latency is one of the things that has been holding innovation back in this sector of NLP.

 

21. “How to Implement Inclusive Design in Your Organization,” Adobe Blog (blog), July 10, 2018, https://theblog.adobe.com/how-to-implement-inclusive-design-in-your-organization/.

This article lists ways to create an inclusive work environment. some of the key reasons include making inclusion a priority and hiring inclusively.

 

22. “Https://Www.Shopify.Com/Partners/Blog/Why-and-How-to-Improve-Ecommerce-Website-Accessibility,” n.d.

Article discusses ecommerce and some of the accessibility problems that exist with this type of internet platform. Also goes into detail on ways to fix this and reasons for doing so.

 

23. “The Political and Ethical Problems of 5G Internet – The Politicalists – Medium,” accessed May 26, 2019, https://medium.com/the-politicalists/the-political-and-ethical-problems-of-5g-internet-7c5ab0ba9458.

Article pairs well with the Huawei article. This one talks about some of the ethical implications of moving to 5G. Which areas of the country will get 5G first. What kind of an advantage does this provide?

 

24. “The Real Reason America Is Scared of Huawei: Internet-Connected Everything – MIT Technology Review,” accessed May 26, 2019, https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612874/the-real-reason-america-is-scared-of-huawei-internet-connected-everything/.

Interesting article that talks about 5G and why adoption of it may be a problem for the U.S. The Chinese company Huawei has a monopoly on the production of phones which would be one of the primary devices used to implement 5G. Huawei has been accused by the U.S for selling information to the Chinese government. This is poses an interesting problem for the U.S regarding technological infrastructure

 

25. Alexis C. Madrigal, “The Servant Economy,” The Atlantic, March 6, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/03/what-happened-uber-x-companies/584236/.

It was interesting to think about this business model after Uber (the company that inspired this movement) went public with their IPO. I think a lot of times it is lost on people that we only hear about the companies that work and there are tens and tens of companies that followed the uber model that failed miserably. It was also a helpful thought experiment to think about who benefits from this type of business. Users? Drivers? Company execs?

 

26. Mightybytes, “What Is Sustainable Web Design?,” accessed April 14, 2018, https://sustainablewebdesign.org/.

It’s nice how sustainable practices actually benefit your website because your making your website run faster, act smoother, and be easier for users. This reminds me of how jobs and environmental practices also go hand in hand despite the fact people often see them as opposing. Doing the right thing–being sustainable–doesn’t have to be a burdan: it can actually act as a guiding tool to improve your design. Knowing of these practices and understanding taking the time to build a better UX is worthwhile for both users and the environment is good to keep in mind as I continue web development.

 

27. “Why Web Accessibility Should Be a Priority Now: 3 Stats to Prove It,” Siteimprove, accessed October 18, 2018, https://siteimprove.com/en-us/blog/why-web-accessibility-should-be-a-priority-now-3-stats-to-prove-it/.

Article gives three big reasons for why web accessibility should be a priority right now. 1) The worlds aging population is expected to triple by 2050. 2) mobile screen reader usage has increased by 70%. 3) 23% of accessibility litigation has happened in the last year.

As the year comes to an end, it is time to reflect on the journey I have had as the Accessibility Intern on the Digital Scholarship team at Carleton College. I came into the year knowing virtually nothing about accessibility but being excited to learn about the field. This year I have had the opportunity to learn about a fascinating variety of topics related to accessibility in tech, ethics, as well as information security.

In the Fall, I built foundational knowledge in internet accessibility. I gained this knowledge through investigating and evaluating off-the-shelf accessibility tools such as WAVE as well as parsing the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Combining this exploration with discussions with my supervisor Celeste Sharpe cemented my understanding of the issues that are plaguing this field as well as what some of the potential solutions are. To cap off the term, our intern cohort used the knowledge we had attained throughout the term to create a detailed comparison between Content Management Systems and Static Site Generators. This exercise gave me a sneak peak of what practical use of accessibility principles looks like in real world systems.

As Winter rolled around I transitioned from less of a research role to more of an application role. I worked on two big projects this term: exploring MediaKron and evaluating 21st Century Artivism. The MediaKron project was in collaboration with Boston College and gave me the chance to see more advanced uses of accessibility within content management systems. I also learned about some of the trade offs associated with building software with a small team and how the best decision is often times not the decision that gets made for any number of reasons (money, time, resources, etc…). With the 21st Century Artivism project, Chris Padilla and I were able to evaluate a current web project on campus and give suggestions for how to improve accessibility and usability.

In the Spring, I was in charge of my own project to explore the differences between AR experiences on wearable devices (Hololens) vs tablet devices. As part of this project, I spent a lot of time programming within Unity trying to build experiences. While I was not able to accomplish my goal, I learned a lot about the difficulties of using proprietary software and some of the downfalls with the current workflow used to develop AR projects for Microsoft Hololens.

I learned so many interesting and valuable things this year. Lessons that I will take with me from Carleton and use professionally in my life after Carleton. I’ve learned so much about the ethical issues that come with this industry and because of this internship I feel prepared to try and solve them in my future endeavors.

 

The first half of this term has been about the creating a project outline and starting development with the Microsoft Hololens. The current project plan is to convert an existing Unity iOS application into an application that can run on the Hololens and then design a usability test to measure the effectiveness of each tool.

The conversion process involves using Microsoft’s Mixed Reality Toolkit (MRTK) to build an AR application that can run on the Hololens. The process of importing this toolkit and getting it running has been much more difficult than previously anticipated. The MRTK is software that is getting updates pushed to it everyday and is evolving so quickly that the documentation and tutorials using this software are unable to catch up. As a result, documentation and tutorials using this software are grossly outdated and often times do not work.

During this ongoing process I have definitely gotten better at searching for bug fixes. I have commonly found myself searching through bug reports and patch notes on the MRTK github page looking for the right version and branch to use.

While I have been able to successfully import MRTK and get some scenes running without compile errors, I have unfortunately not been able to get the keyboard to imitate hand gestures. This is my current roadblock and one that I hope to solve soon.

 

The second half of winter term was about wrapping up projects that started in the first half of the term and getting introduced to new ones that will be my focus for the rest of the year.

One of the key projects that reached a conclusion was the MediaKron content management exploration. For this project, I investigated and evaluated MediaKron on several metrics related to accessibility and created a document that highlighted some of the things that made it stand out and some aspects that I thought could use some improvement. This project concluded with our team having a skype conversation with the creator and curator of MediaKron where we discussed our feedback. In addition to giving our feedback, we also got the chance to learn more about the advantages and disadvantages that come with building an application in an academic setting.

I also continued working on defining my project with the Microsoft Hololens. As part of this process I got to demo the Hololens for the first time. My demo experience combined with independent research and conversations with my team guided my interest toward thinking about how to better design multi-user experiences and how to build intuitive, more accessible pop-up menus that take advantage of the Hololens’ functionality.

The next steps of this project will be getting acquainted with Microsoft’s documentation and running through a few tutorials to get comfortable with the software.

 

The theme for first half of this term has been turning the knowledge we gained in our respective fields from last term into actionable items while continuing to still learn.

One of the big projects I have completed this term was an evaluation of a site called 21st century Artivism, which can best be described as a digital collection of cultural items relating to Spanish culture and is a site that is maintained by a Carleton professor. The site has been facing some issues with its content organization and our job was to find these issues and create a recommendation for how to solve these issues. The issues Chris P. and I found were related to the organization of information within the site and the overall usability that the site afforded. The essential solutions within our recommendation were centered around choosing a new theme to better highlight the content of the site, creating a new relationship between levels of content to make navigation easier, and fixing minor accessibility bugs to improve usability.

The presence of weekly student led discussions based on interesting and relevant articles on technology, ethics, and usability have been essential to continuing my learning process. I have found that discussing these articles has helped cement interesting themes and ideas concerning technology and has enabled me to learn more about each subject.

For the remainder of the term I will be shifting my focus towards building an accessible AR experience using Microsoft HoloLens.

 

This was my first term working as the Accessibility Intern for the Digital Scholarship team at Carleton. After getting introduced to the field of Digital Humanities I began exploring accessibility in the web and  investigating the similarities and differences between some of the most popular mediums in the Digital Humanities space.

 

Accessibility in the Web

 

Learning about web accessibility is something I worked on throughout the term. I started the term knowing very little about the subject and after 10 weeks I can confidently say that I l have a much better understanding and a greater appreciation for its importance.  This process began with me learning how to use accessibility tools like WAVE and Colorblind Webpage Checker. Once I understood how to leverage these tools, I used them to evaluate some of the most common Content Management Systems (CMS) Digital Scholars use to serve content on the web (More information on how this process can be found here). Towards the end of the term I began creating a thorough an understandable guide for how to develop web content using knowledge I gained from the CMS investigation as well as reading through the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. The project is still in its initial stages and is something I plan to continue building throughout the year.

 

World Usability Day

 

On November 8th the other interns and I attended World Usability Day at the University of Minnesota. As a novice to conferences of any kind, I felt that this was a great introduction. Presentations covered a wide variety of topics that ranged from web accessibility to data privacy and protection to a talk on how to conduct ethical user testing. On of the interesting aspects of this conference was the lack of academic speakers and the plethora of speakers that worked in industry. The most informative talk I heard discussed the most common forms of disability, what aspects of web design negatively affect those people, and how to solve them.  As a senior computer science major who is currently job hunting, hearing from people that work in the usability industry provided valuable information that I am sure will be helpful as a search for full time opportunities. All in all, this conference was a great first step into world of computer science conferences and I am excited to go to more in the future!

The main project this term was an in-depth comparison between some of the most common Content Management Systems (CMS) used by Digital Scholars and a couple of static site generators. The CMS we looked at were WordPress, Drupal, Omeka, and Mukurtu. The static sites we investigated were Jekyll, Hugo, and Quire. We researched each platform for backend, frontend, accessibility, and ethics criteria and recorded our findings in a google spreadsheet. We then synthesized our findings and provided recommendations in another document.

 

This project provided an excellent opportunity to learn more about Digital Humanities. After testing each of the above systems, I walked away from this project with an improved understanding of how Digital Scholars interact with different content platforms. One of our big findings was that each has different target audiences and should not be compared on a level playing field (Ex: WordPress vs Mukurtu). This meant we were often times comparing apples to oranges rather than apples to apples. As the accessibility intern I was in charge of researching the accessibility aspects of each platform. This involved inspecting the raw html elements of default and public instances of each content management system. Along the way I explored the accessibility community associated with each platform and gained a better understanding of the levels of emphasis each system put towards accessible design. I was able to determine a number of key differences between each platform and understand the benefits and drawbacks of each.

 

This process was not without its faults. Towards the end of the project the process started becoming repetitive. While Drupal and WordPress offered a troves of information regarding accessibility, Omeka and Mukurtu offered very little. Searching for accessibility content for static sites was also more difficult than CMS.

 

Despite these drawbacks, I found the experience to be overwhelmingly informative and a great introductory project.

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