In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, technology played an important role ensuring that essential goods and services, such as grocery and food deliveries, could continue to move throughout the economy, that virtual meetings—from doctors’ visits to chats with family—could be organized at a social distance, and that factories could be repurposed to produce and distribute essential goods, such as ventilators. But while we marvel at the agility and mobility of Big Tech, we must also consider that the pandemic has accelerated many long-predicted changes to the nature of work, and that the social costs of these changes will be unevenly distributed among those whose labor makes this new economy possible.
Amelia Gibson and Rua Williams explore academic scholarship and public discussion around disability access and accessibility and problematize the idea that disabled people truly have access to technology in contexts where they do not control technology.
Hector Beltran presents the phenomena of hacking and the hackathon. It also addresses issues of access and equity in how racialized, gendered, classed, or other marginalized social groups can undertake hacking or how they are treated within hacking spaces.
