Borrino, R., Furini, M., & Roccetti, M. (2009). Augmenting Social Media Accessibility (pp. 54-57). Madrid: W4A '09 Proceedings of the 2009 International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibililty (W4A).

The purpose of this article is to propose architecture for making information on social media more accessible to the elderly, the less technologically advanced, the disabled and other members of society less able to utilize social media in its current form. The authors propose a system of encoding social media content and presenting such content on television sets, which they claim has wider reach (99% in Europe).

The authors claim that the “social media revolution” will further widen the information divide where those with access to information will be even more information rich while those without will be even more information poor as social media becomes a more important tool in daily life. They claim that social media are designed for people without economic, geographic, physical, or technological limitations. The authors hypothesize that having social media content available on television will be a feasible method of bridging the information gap.

The method the researchers use to test their proposal is the implementation of a prototype. The authors conclude that the prototype implemented is successful and state that their proposed system, as a means of bridging the information access gap created by the rise of social media, is feasible.

This article has many blind spots. However, my primary critique of this article is the fact that the proposed method of bridging the information gap will not change representation of the marginalized social groups. The authors acknowledge that the reason social media is as powerful as it is is that it does not function using a one-to-many broadcast system like traditional media do but by a many-to-many system in that the audience can also be content creators. However, the system they propose only allows for consumption of information and not the creation of information. This would mean that even if the system allows the elderly, the disabled and less technologically advanced to access social media content, it will not allow them to fully partake in the social media revolution because they will not be able to contribute content and therefore, would still be underrepresented.

The authors suggest that technology (social media) shapes the functioning of society. This suggests that the authors adhere to the technological determinism sociotechnical framework in this article.

Keywords: accessibility, social media, web 2.0

Page author: Salim Zubair