Beyond Traditional Ethics when Developing Assistive Technology for and with Deaf People in Developing Regions - Ethical Engineering for International Development and Environmental Sustainability - page 312

7.1 Main Themes Summarised

The main themes covered by this chapter are as follows: Tacit cultural assumptions ,
as opposed to cultural and value relativism (see Sect. 2.1 ), can get in the way of
providing 'real access and real impact'; the community must be empowered and
allowed to drive the research agenda via stronger, as opposed to weaker, participa-
tion (see Fig. 10.1 and Sect. 2.2 ); informed consent is fraught with procedural chal-
lenges when dealing with communities in developing regions (see Sect. 2.3 );
informed participation should be understood, considered and pursued (see Sect. 2.4 );
and lastly, traditional ethics processes , such as those associated with an IRB, are not
wrong; they just are not entirely suffi cient when pursuing AT research in developing
regions (see Sect. 2.5 ).

7.2 What We Have Learnt

Based on iterative ICT interventions with a particular Deaf community since 1999,
we have learnt the following: the Deaf community prefers to communicate in SASL ,
not text, even though they also want to improve their text literacy; improved textual
and ICT literacy has empowered the Deaf community to convey innovative ideas to
help drive an AT research programme to mutual benefi t, e.g. SignSupport; the Deaf
community is a source of innovative ideas , and research projects can fl ow from these
(postgraduate theses and publications); stronger participation , as opposed to
weaker, culminates in community empowerment; and awareness of tacit cultural
assumptions enables one to move beyond them .

7.3 How We Have Changed Our Practise

We fully understand that our lessons apply to the single case study that is portrayed
in this chapter. However, the themes listed in Sect. 7.1 and the lessons from Sect. 7.2
have changed our practise, and we feel it benefi cial to share how this has happened,
because it has wider implications for AT design in developing regions.
We shifted from informal to formal, and certifi ed, ICT training to build capacity
with noticeable results in both communicability in written digital communication
(notably email, SMS and Facebook) and input into the research programme, e.g. the
mobile sign language for doctor and pharmacy scenarios. We moved from textual to
SASL-based research goals and outputs/prototypes. All information relayed to the
Deaf community is now in signed language, including information sheets, consent
forms, questionnaires and focus group data collection exercises. We came to priori-
tise community-driven goals within our tertiary research programme, e.g. choosing
to prioritise the authoring tool (now addressed by a team of three postgraduate
students) over the 'cooler' visual password interface.