 Thanks for joining us here at I.T.U.'s headquarters for Wiss' Farm 2019. And I'm delighted to be joined by Anthony Giannumis, assistant professor of universal design of ICT at Oslo Metropolitan University. Anthony, thank you for joining us. Thank you. It's so nice to be here. And Anthony, you were here to present or to help present a project by your students. Yes. And it's all about including more women into the economy, isn't it? Tell us more about it. Well, first of all, this is not my project. These are my students' projects. So shout out to HIFSA, Alina, and Rosie for such an amazing work they did in the last two days. So they came up with a really brilliant solution for including women who have children back into the labor force, back into employment, or maybe into employment for the first time. So our focus area was actually on Pakistan because one of our students, HIFSA, is her family comes from Pakistan. So we have a nice close connection with the communities there. And so she, through her family connections and other folks that we worked with, tried to find out what were the major challenges that these women experience, and what are the major opportunities that these women have for contributing to the workforce. And so they came up with this really brilliant idea to create, it's kind of a marketplace, it's kind of a social network, and it's kind of a learning space for women who have children to take their talent and sewing and seamstresses to become entrepreneurs, to trade their clothing designs, to learn new techniques, to learn about maintenance of any kind of machinery that they have, and to really sell the goods and services that they have available to them from their own homes, and to connect not only to women across the neighborhood, but also women around the world. Okay, so it's a kind of online platform where they can connect, share experiences, learn new skills basically. Exactly, exactly. So it's kind of lifelong learning, it's gender equality, it's a whole bunch of really amazing opportunities for people to really become part of society and to be reintroduced into society, because there's so much social exclusion that happens after having children, that women experience, there's so many stigmas related to women in workplace in many parts of the world, and so this was really a key contribution to alleviating some of these challenges. But you were not just here for the Hankerson, were you? No, no. You presented at the panel, didn't you, on accessibility? Yes, yes, exactly. So tell us about that. So my specialty area is actually in universal design, and it's also a competence area of my university. And universal design is this really crazy idea that we should be creating technology that everyone can use equally, no matter their age, no matter their race or ethnicity, their gender, no matter their disability, no matter their literacy, anything. And so what we did was we presented a panel of six people from all walks of life, from all different parts of the world, young and old, to talk about their experiences with accessing and using technology, using ICT. And it was really such an amazing opportunity because the work that these folks are doing from the grassroots are really challenging the status quo, there's challenging power relationships, and they're really creating a much more egalitarian society across the world because they're creating technology in a way that there's no barriers to using it. It's not like, oh, well, this technology I'm creating just for someone who's like me, I'm creating technology for someone like them, someone like them, them and them across the globe. And it's not about creating, like, a generic vanilla solution that doesn't really work for anyone, it's really about creating a one-size-fits-one solution, something that's customized and adaptable to the users in needs and preferences. It's very relevant because at WSIS Forum, we're talking a lot about bridging the digital gap, and it's one way to get there, isn't it? There's a real sense of urgency at the moment, isn't there? Absolutely. It's been an increasing trend really since the 90s when the World Wide Web started really hitting the mainstream, and it's continuing to gain the momentum, which is really encouraging for a researcher like me, who's only just recently started in this field, to see how it's galvanized people and how it's really taken a movement to kind of push it forward. So it's really a privilege and honor for me to be part of it, and I also work with the Equals organization within the UN that focuses on bridging the digital gender gap. And so this issue is very multi-dimensional because it has to do with skills, it has to do with leadership positions, and it has to do with fundamental issues of access and use of technology, which often comes back to the design of technology. So when we talk about the ways in which technology is being made, the people who are involved in that process, and if that process isn't promoting inclusion and equality, then you're just going to end up with technology that perpetuates kind of systematic biases and prejudices and inequalities. That's an important point, isn't it? Ethics should not be an afterthought, it should be built in. Absolutely, absolutely. And I think we're seeing this in a lot of engineering programs at MIT and in schools across the world, especially my university, where we have a master's degree focused exclusively on universal design of ICT. We're seeing this ethical dimension to understanding really complex industrial engineering challenges, really complex computer science challenges, really complex electronics and mechanical engineering challenges. And that's really, really important because if you don't have that moral compass going into an engineering project, then what you end up with is just creating technology that reflects your own personal biases. And what we want to do is create a new generation of technologies that are reflected of the diversity of the human experience and not just the experiences of one or small group of engineers. Okay, well, Anthony Giannumis, thank you very much. Thank you so much.