Digital Social Services: From Data Aggregation to Culturally Competent Content

1. Digital Social Services: From Data Aggregation to Culturally Competent Content Dan Albertson & Amanda B. Nickerson University at Buffalo The State University of New York

2. The Societal Problem • People with disabilities experience higher levels of: • Bullying: Repetitive actions toward others • Abuse: Physical, sexual, verbal, medical, psychological,denial of necessities • Exploitation: financial, sexual • Siloed resources and information on support services

3. Project Introduction • Multimedia and Peer-to-Peer Support for Abuse Prevention • Work in progress (we’re really just beginning) • Report on a Project Grant • NYS Developmental Disabilities Planning Council (DDPC) • 18-month, total budget of US$252,000 • Partnership between Alberti Center for Bullying Abuse Prevention and DLIS at UB • Currently in preliminary data collection phase at this time • Already seeing insights for future LIS research and practice

4. Project Overview • Project expectations • Collection/aggregation of resources; a usable, searchable Web directory in a sense consisting of: • External sites, external content, internal documents, handouts, brochures, tip sheets, etc. • All formats of information • Emphasis on multimedia • Peer-to-Peer Support • Social media, internal … TBD • Privacy is key • Site must support the social, cultural, and linguistic needs of the public

5. Data Tasks: Aggregation and Processing • Data/content aggregation • Vetting process/system • Video and audio • Extraction • Translation • Encoding and closed captioning • Text (website content) and documents • Static and dynamic content • Readability • Translation • Style of information delivery

6. On Translation • Use existing public surveys, datasets, and guidelines

7. Development and Evaluation • Focus groups - as part of pre- and post-development • E.g. DD Day of NYS • Types of resources • Topics and categories • How it fits into life (e.g. in group home settings) • Expectations of peer-to-peer communications • Discount usability

8. Preliminary Findings for Practice • Accessibility is critical, but that’s not all • Translation is key for digital cultural competency, but there’s so much more • Information style • Emphasis on multimedia • Readability, thinking about educational level • More will emerge … • Bottom line for short term: find the balance • Prioritize content

9. Future Research • Practice • Digital cultural competency packages / toolkits • Digital cultural competency standards • Seeing progress in health information field • Theory • Online communities • Motivation theories, reciprocity, efficacy, sense of community, social network

10. LIS Education • Information professionals need exposure to cultural competency skills • In addition and beyond physical settings • Working with different datasets • Web, text, video, audio • Cultural competence + digital data skills = digital cultural competence

11. Conclusions • A lot of positive work and research can emerge from the project • We are trained to think of users, such as domain experts • But what about larger groups of the public who are online and often overlooked?

12. Questions and Thank You