Decolonizing digital accessibility within land/water realities using minimal computing

Abstract

ABSTRACT The purpose of this essay is to conceptualize accessibility in digital education for school children through a minimal computing perspective. This perspective prioritizes the contextual, social, and relational as part of the ethic of minimal computing mantra to consider What. We. Need. To achieve our goals, we begin with a story from a classroom in rural New Mexico, then we problematize definitions of accessibility for computing in educational settings considering how an identification as having disabilities is situated within colonial monolingual/monocultural structures that position minds and bodies as deficient. We connect these structures to capitalistic educational technology movements like using personalized instructional materials that do little to support the identities of children in spaces like the rural Southwest. Finally, we highlight what accessibility might look like as conceptualized from a land/water perspective where children's connections to their current realities are given precedence.