‘Left-handed, colour blind’: As AI dominates headlines, Brisbane tech expert targets excluded
Brisbane-based tech developer and web design educator Kimberly Valenny is focused on one in four Australians “digitally excluded from technology”.
As a front-end developer at Deloitte and a web design tutor at Queensland University of Technology, Kimberly Valenny has a unique role in both building the technology of the future and teaching the next generation how to make technology better.
Kimberly Valenny has an analogy she likes to use when clarifying the importance of accessible technology.
“Designing with accessibility is like considering food allergies when you’re organising an event,” Valenny explains. “You may not have any allergies or dietary requirements yourself but as the host, you still do everything you can to make sure that everyone is catered for.”
When most people hear the word ‘accessible’, they assume it’s within the context of disabilities, but Valenny stresses inaccessible tech can exclude all types of abilities.
She cites left-handedness and colour blindness as overlooked examples, with most technology, web design, apps and digital products built predominantly for right-handers and standard vision.
“Left-handers like myself have to stretch quite far to the other side of the screen to look into the comments or send a reel to somebody,” Valenny explains.
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“Being left-handed has never been socially considered as a disability, right?” she says. “But the same ratio of people that are left-handed is very similar to the amount of people that have colour blindness or some level of visual impairment.”
She adds that even simple things like not enough digital colour contrast can make content completely inaccessible for people with colour blindness.
A recent study by the Australian Human Rights Commssion found that one in four Australians are digitally excluded from technology, meaning they have difficulty using tech due to access issues, affordability or digital ability.
The study also found that 96 percent of websites have accessibility errors, meaning people who use assistive technology are unable to fully engage with these websites.
With AI steadily gaining popularity over the past few years in places of learning, institutions like QUT have had to adapt their classrooms to reflect an ever-changing industry.
“From an education perspective and adapting it to our classrooms, QUT is leading the way quite well here in terms of how we’re embracing the use of advanced technologies and AI as part of the education experience,” Valenny said.
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She explains that while educators do not necessarily refrain from the students using AI, they do welcome them to use AI tools to help advance their learning.
“I like to consider any AI tool as like a calculator when you’re in high school and you’re taking a math class,” she explains. “You can use the calculator to help you get to the answer faster but at the end of the day you’ve got to be able to sit the math exam and be able to do it without the tool.”
When the topic of ethical AI arises, Valenny says she encourages students to consider accessibility and diverse user needs when using AI and the real world impact of their designs.
One activity she uses in the classroom helps students build empathy around accessible tech design.
“We get students to close their eyes or to shut their laptop screens and then try and navigate a website without their vision and they get really uncomfortable,” Valenny says.
“It’s a really hard task but that’s the point.
“It’s supposed to help them understand and then leverage how they can navigate their AI usage and the prompts that they use and the tools they have to better understand what the final objective is.”
Valenny clarifies that while AI can be a powerful tool for learning, it can’t replicate what it means to be a human with varying levels of abilities.
“AI can definitely support innovation in technology but human judgement will always remain critical to interpreting the context and designing technology and digital products that work for people.”
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