Raising the Floor partners with collaborative, multi-sector and applied research organizations and networks that proactively prevent barriers and promote greater inclusion. We facilitate adopting an open and collaborative inclusive approach to help design, develop, and promote resources and products that contribute to advance digital equality, enhancing people's quality of life.
Key activities
Research and development. We use open and participatory methods and practices, and involve the relevant communities and experts in the process.
Tools and frameworks. We design and openly share components and systems that support inclusive design.
Exploration. We explore and test other ways to ensure digital inclusion for all.
Standards. We work with many standardisation groups around the world to ensure that accessibility and overall digital inclusion is considered.
Consulting and training. We offer consulting and training in digital accessibility and inclusive design.
Research interests
Raising the Floor's team specializes and is interested in all work related to social equity and digital inclusion. In particular, but not limited to:
-
Building accessible coding environments.
-
Building flexible software with museums and cultural institutions to enhance their visitors' experience, making it easy for visitors to connect with content, interact with objects, and extend the museum visit.
-
Building interactive gentle sensory environments for a care home, school, or public space.
-
Building playful software to encourage learning, growth, and exploration, especially among individuals with intellectual disabilities and developmental delays.
-
Building projects/software that empower the collaboration, learning and growth opportunities of people/communities that, for some reason, are or may be at risk of being left behind.
-
Building tools and curricula for STEM training among underserved communities.
-
Community-driven projects to address the inherent bias against small minorities and outliers in artificial intelligence and data analytics.
-
Creating data architectures that help marginalised and under-resourced communities express ownership and control over data which represents them.
-
Creating tools that let people with disabilities themselves produce and adapt their own software tools, opening up access to design for all kinds of marginalized communities, with differing accessibility needs.
-
Creating digital tools that promote emotional health and overall quality of life, especially to combat loneliness and isolation due to age or under pandemic-related social measures or other causes.
-
Designing educational coding tools for kids who have been left out of learning—especially those with complex needs.
-
Ensuring access to the tools and an ecosystem that support people with disabilities on a daily basis, and make their lives easier in many ways.
-
Ensuring that inclusive solutions are pleasing beyond functional, by using emotion-centered design methods, to impact on people's feelings, emotions and perceptions.
-
Ensuring that every device/interface is accessible and able to be used by everyone.
-
Exploring machine learning and deep learning techniques in order to automatically build accessible UIs.
-
Promoting the tools and ecosystems that support people with disabilities on a daily basis, making their lives easier and better, in all contexts and moments.
Projects and products
- We Count - a community-driven project to address the inherent bias against small minorities and outliers in artificial intelligence and data analytics.
- Coding to Learn and Create - designing educational coding tools for kids who have been left out of learning—especially those with complex needs.
- Global AT Data Collaboration - participation in a new collaborative effort to promote AT databases for every country.
- Inclusive Learning - developing new IT-based tools and methodologies to address students' diversity in vocational education centres.
- SmartWork - supporting active and healthy ageing at work for older office workers, through a suite of smart services, building a Worker-Centric AI System for work ability sustainability. (Horizon 2020).
- UI Options - adapting the user interface to meet diverse and variable personal needs (a GPII project, led by IDRC).
- Morphic - making computers easier to use through auto-personalization, making built-in accessibility and usability features easier to find and use, and interface simplification and ultra-simplification (based on GPII's auto-personalization project).
- DeveloperSpace - A common space for those wanting to learn about or develop new solutions (a GPII project).
- Unified Listing - A comprehensive compilation of ICT accessibility tools from around the world
This work is the result of a collective effort of over 50 organizations from 13 different countries and the multidisciplinary expertise of top research centers, universities, companies, data protection agencies and public and non-profit organisations.