[liberationtech] ‘Kind’ technology?

[Tanya Rabourn]

Harnidh,

I think you’ll find a number of examples from financial inclusion projects that change the “gears of existing/incumbent technology” (specifically fintech) “to specifically serve vulnerable populations.” For example, I was involved in a project to adapt mobile money so that Village Savings and Loan groups in Uganda could use it to store their groups’ cash securely. Previously, mobile money, and it’s methods for identification/authentication, assumed a single user, so we had to design a group system. The SMS messages notifying members of transactions also increase financial transparency for these groups. 
https://www.grameenfoundation.org/introducing-airtel-weza-uganda

Of course mobile money itself could be considered an example. 

-Tanya

--
Tanya Rabourn
Experience Design for Social Impact
tanya.rabourn at gmail.com
USA +1 646 418 1054
Skype: rabourn




> On Feb 24, 2018, at 10:21 AM, Jayne Cravens <jayne at coyotebroad.com> wrote:
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>> From: Harnidh Kaur<kharnidh at gmail.com>
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>> I don't think most of you know this, but I work in the development space
>> and we're always trying to find cool ways to make tech make the world
>> better. I've been trying to read up more about the same. So, here.
>> 
>> Is 'kind technology' a thing? Where people are trying to change gears of
>> existing/incumbent technology to specifically serve vulnerable populations?
>> 
>> Any existing ideas/something you're working on/things you think SHOULD find
>> a kind tech iteration. Gimme!
>  
> I would consider things dubbed #tech4good as "kind technology". There is a long, long list of examples of these kinds of initiatives on the tech4good / ICT4D branch of the TechSoup community forum:
> http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/community/f/16.aspx
> I regularly post examples to this forum, as do a few others. 
>  
> I certainly consider all tech that gives Internet accessibility to people with disabilities - assistive technologies - as well as technology that is designed to be accessible for people with disabilities (people using screen readers, people with color perception challenges, people who are using a tool that is the equivalent of tabbing on a computer - meaning they cannot use features like mouse-overs, etc.) as "kind technology. 
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> Ms. Jayne Cravens MSc
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