Beyond Traditional Ethics when Developing Assistive Technology for and with Deaf People in Developing Regions - Ethical Engineering for International Development and Environmental Sustainability - page 291

There are many forms, or interpretations, of action research. Participatory action
research emphasises, as its name suggests, participation with end users (Kemmis
and McTaggart 2000 ). Action research is compatible with development studies and
ethnographic action research in particular (Tacchi et al. 2003 ). Sterling and
Rangaswamy ( 2010 ) discuss how action research in development brings challenges
to IRBs, particularly for informed consent, and this topic will be addressed in more
detail below. Dearden and Rizvi ( 2008 ) discuss action research and related methods
from two different perspectives: participatory interactive systems design and par-
ticipatory approaches to international development. Following on this, Dearden
( 2013 ) discusses action research as a mechanism to conduct interventionist work.
Action research has also been championed in ICT4D work by Tucker and Blake
( 2010 ) and Doerfl inger and Dearden ( 2013 ). Action research has only recently been
embraced in the fi eld of contemporary HCI, an area of Computer Science that has
long resisted the non-positivist leanings of action research, e.g. Hayes ( 2011 , 2012 )
who stresses the social intricacies and relevance of HCI research via engagement
with end users.
Social relevance is a key driver for development studies, including ICT4D, and a
main component to achieve that is participation. Both Dearden and Rizvi ( 2008 ) and
Anokwa et al. ( 2009 ) survey the ICT4D reporting on participation. Anokwa et al.
( 2009 ) argue that participation happens over a continuum from weak to strong. In
weak participation, the participant is merely an advisor rather than a co-instigator or
designer. For example, participants provide feedback on a prototype as opposed to
helping design it. Strong participation, on the other hand, is a project driven primar-
ily by a given community. There are many cases where participative reality differs
from intention. Anokwa et al. ( 2009 ) derived the weak-strong take on participation
from Michener ( 1998 ), who comes from a development studies perspective and
examined a case study in Burkina Faso in terms of several categorisations of partici-
pation. We have taken the liberty of organising two of these categorisation schemes
on a continuum, together with Anokwa et al.'s ( 2009 ) (see Fig. 10.1 ), because we
feel it is possible to position, and indeed to move, an ICT intervention from weak to
strong participation in a developing region context.
One end goal could be empowerment of the community whereby they can drive
and take on the initiative by themselves (in other words, we research ourselves out
of a job). What Michener ( 1998 ) intends, however, is that despite empowerment
being the end goal, 'Development planners and academics are at a point where they
must adjust participatory frameworks to be more responsive to fi eld-level realities'.
Heeks ( 1999 , 2002 ) and Dearden and Rizvi ( 2008 ) would agree: there is often a
design-reality gap or participation-reality gap where participation is not fully
realised.
We argue that community-based co-design (CBCD, see Blake et al. 2011 ), our
take on action research, can provide ways of bridging that gap. 'Community-based'
conveys the fact that we deal with groups of people rather than individuals. In the
developed world, computers are geared to an individual's requirements, i.e. PC
stands for personal computer, that a given device is meant for a single person. In
many of the communities in Africa, devices, even cell phones, are shared, and pos-