Dear viewer, these subtitles were generated by a machine via the service YouTube and therefore are (very) buggy. If you are capable, please help us to create good quality subtitles: https://c3subtitles.de/talk/2536 Thanks!
[Music]
hello on day two on CCC camp
2023 um we are here at uh bits and Bo if
I'm not mistaken yes thank you thanks
for the for the um confirmation um as
you probably know otherwise you wouldn't
be here um there are services that
people are um denied or that are buried
behind legal barriers that cost a a lot
of money a lot of time a lot of effort
and a lot of knowledge and language
knowledge and all all the other stuff to
get behind to so here our next speaker
is here to talk about how technology how
technology could address the cost and um
help these people uh get their defend
their human rights so please welcome
with a very warm Round of Applause for
access to justice for human Center
Design Tech
virage hey all just wanted to say
firstly thank you for coming I
appreciate it uh this talk is largely
going to be about human rights issues
that I've uh encountered human rights
issues that I've encountered while
working and then trying to use
technology to address these issues if
you guys want to like ask questions or
just like chat throughout my
presentation feel free to do so
so like this is this better okay thank
you yeah so I think like the first the
first slide is going to go through
specifically my experience but then also
I think the first question to ask for
whether technology should even have a
place so on the left is places where I
worked and have seen uh technology to
like really help I was a refugee lawyer
so I conduct Refugee applications a lot
of it is form filling before you get to
the courts police accountability it's
more how do you actually stop police and
then provide accountability during the
interaction genocide in Myanmar we found
that a lot of people that in internal
displaced camps would have access to
phones but they didn't have access to
any other type of information General
legal advice I'll talk about that more
on the next slide but where I really
found that technology did not have a
role was in First Nations or indigenous
populations where no one has a phone you
don't have landlines you don't have like
access to computers at all and there are
still kind of be interventions through
technology to address these type of some
type of structural problems in remote
communities
so this is one example where I think
technology should have a role and
prototype fund has um they funded one of
my projects called my rightsinfo which
applies human- centered design
principles to the European Court of
Human Rights and this is the world's
largest human rights database in terms
of case law this court produces the most
amount of cases that has ever existed on
human rights but its functionality is so
flawed that if you filter by English
you'll get cases that are only available
in French so as a lawyer this has like
it's at first to me sounded funny but
then it became quite problematic quickly
so if a refugee comes into my office and
then I start like uh looking for cases
that are descriptive of their issues to
start advocating for them I have no
comfort that if I type in their factual
description that I'll actually see the
cases that apply to this person there's
no Comfort at all and for me that's
quite scary if it's like especially if
it's in a human rights situation if it's
something like tax or Commerce it's like
it's a little bit less scary because
their life's literally not a
danger so this is where I think Tech
would have a role and should have a
role so I'll go into some of like the um
some of the project that I worked on
structural problems that I've seen and
then how like I think technology should
be viewed to change human rights issues
the first one I'd like to talk about is
police accountability and then this is
how my journey in human rights started
when I was 18 I was arrested uh without
charge put into cells overnight did not
know what happened I've been searched
multiple times throughout my life and
then at this point I was always looking
at what could have done in that
situation what information should have
had at that situation that could have
helped and then after that violation
happened how could I obtain some type of
Remedy and then that's kind of what put
me into the like the track of law human
rights and Tech because if you and in
that situation I wasn't able to access
lawyers I didn't have money I didn't
have information about like my family
didn't know lawyers they didn't know the
system right so it's like can I
challenge this how should I challenge
this I knew something bad happened to me
but I felt
powerless I made an app in New Zealand
that basically tells people what it's
not what not to do which is how the law
is framed right don't commit a crime
don't do X but it tells people what they
can do everything's linked to specific
case law where people have uh where
people successfully challenged the cops
you can also see case law where the
judge will literally say that police
have been caught to be lying forging
evidence and if most of the information
that like exists about police
accountability again is these are your
rights this is what you can do this is
what you can't do but I think the
narrative really needs to change to be
something like the people that are going
to be stopping you are trying to violate
your rights and in that situation you
have to take proactive action so the
police accountability app that I made it
records the police and then also
depending on which factual scenario
you're in will lead you to a set of
information so if you know are you
walking in public are you walking down
the street so it's kind of like having a
lawyer in your pocket that if a police
officer stops you you can be like hey
I'm not holding anything like you don't
have the right to do this for me it
tells you what to say and everything's
linked out to the case
law the second the second issue that
I've had was as a refugee lawyer you but
you get a lot of situations where a
refugee will come into your office or
other clients offices and they've
suffered political persecution you know
like Grievous bodily harm they've seen
multiple people dying around them but
they can't speak English and they don't
know what the legal process is when
you're working at like a not for-profit
legal um legal space You have about 20
minutes I'd say at maximum with each
Refugee the classic situation that
happens is a refugee will come in and
they iMed immediately start talking
about the harm that they faced and
that's obvious right but that's not the
information you a lawyer requires to
actually Advance their claim this
literally results in this like I've seen
it happen multitudes of times where
you'll have to tell the person like hey
stop we need this information people are
going to like cry they're emotional and
then I'm like the questions that you
have to ask are like how many family
members do you have in Australia and
obviously the F be like what like why
like why are you asking me this this has
nothing to do with my harm and the
majority of time that you spend on these
type of humanitarian Visa applications
is completely like it's completely
bureaucratic there's also an issue that
so that in in addition to these
interviewing issues you have invisible
requirements so let's say that you like
again the same question there's a
there's a field that says like do you
have family in in Australia if you are a
competent Refuge G and you can speak
English and you have the ability like
let's say you were a lawyer in your home
country and you can fill out a form you
could submit this form and your form
would fail because these certain
paragraphs have invisible requirements
which you only told once you failed so
in that same places uh do you have
family in Australia you have to put
commas SL slashes and say where they
live and also provide contact uh
information and this information's not
on that form so basically what you could
like what I started building was a
refugee form filler where you can change
the question language to any like any
language that you're in it also has
decisionally logic that same form it's
called the 861 application form asks you
for your name eight times right in
section three will be like uh give out
your family information even though you
would say no I have no family in the
first in the first question so you can
use decision 3 logic to really simplify
this process but the biggest thing is
that if you like translate this form
Arabic now you have your client who's
actually aware of the process that
they're going through they know the
challenge that you you're facing and the
problem to solve so again it's like
looking at technology is not so much
like I we're just going to make this
application easier but it's literally
about allowing people to empower
themselves through the process that
you're engaging
in and the next the next project that
I've working on is General legal advice
which I think brings this together so
prototype funded uh a project that I'm
working on called my rightsinfo which
relates to this this
database my rights. info took was the
purpose of it was people don't
understand the law cuz it's complex it's
hard to access a terrible datab base
that doesn't even work if you imagine
that it works by principle and it was
how like if you're walking down the
street and a police officer stopped you
or let's say your C your your child was
taken away by Social Services
and you don't know what your rights are
how do you solve this problem and what's
the best way of going about this and
again I was trying to look from the
human centered design principle of
looking at the problem and looking up
instead of looking down on how to
provide information so the my right or
info has three different points that you
can access this information for three
different audience members the first is
by filling out a questionnaire that just
has binary options like did this harm
happen to you yes or no at the end of
that questionnaire you'll be presented
with the violations that apply to you
you can go further and then look at all
the cases that apply to
you then there's also the second uh the
second application which is looking at
law more in terms of a social aspect so
all the cases in this database have been
Fel uh fed into an infographic so if
you're like a researcher and you want to
see hey how did like the court start
deciding on uh like let's say gay
marriage rights and at what year did
they do this and how do they look at
that like compared to the right to
torture now you can choose which
articles that you want to view across a
time frame and then see what the court
is thinking and the third one is just uh
it's an advanced text search feature
which is like your classic search
feature but again something that the H
do database doesn't do is they don't
even have a spell check and legal names
are difficult and law words difficult so
I think just INF using a spell check has
made a huge Improvement in the lives of
lawyers so it's kind of like just
looking at basic access principles basic
human cented design principles to break
down these
problems so as as I was saying
everything is designed with
accessibility in mind and I think one of
the issues that like really comes to
play is that the average reading
age I probably shouldn't have Tau you
feel really hot the is a good place to
go
23.5° C let's go to the
lake um
drink have a great
time minutes two minutes you get two
minutes I just feel bad if like some
really important information was
provided yeah
okay um so the average reading age of
the world is the age of a
10-year-old Legal Information I find
difficult to understand so how do you
provide like you can't even achieve a
basic accessibility um principle just on
the information that you're seeing so
how do you like how do you solve this
right like it's such a it's such a weird
obstacle that everyone here is owed
human rights but I doubt 95% of people
even know what that like what that means
and how to actually use your rights
right it's and it's done by I think it's
done by purpose but so the this my
rights or info is also looking at it
from not just accessibility but people
that have accessibility issues also need
to be able to access the law and most
Legal Information websites don't have
this so the entire website's built in
grayscale which allows people with
visual disabilities to be able to access
the information everything apart from
the legal information that's provided is
written that a 10-year-old can
understand this screen leaders are
utiliz so if you have visual impairments
as well you can utilize the screen
leader to start understanding legal
information and I think that's also
really big Gap is like targeting
invisible populations that have their
rights discriminated but then also
targeting them to actually receive
rights based information that they can
utilize and that's the end of the show
uh if anyone has questions feel free to
ask so no need for additional two
minutes awesome unless we have very many
questions let's start with the first
one uh thank you very much it was a
really nice talk um and I'm really
really happy so I'm actually part of a
project called access to Justice funny
enough uh much smaller scope so it's
kind of German
perspective um and we have two kind of
projects and one is kind of open data
for law C like law and um cases and so
on so kind of the third part and the
second project is uh on kind of
simplifying access uh for getting your
rights so kind of kind of form filler um
so it's super nice that you kind of
exactly talked about these two projects
um and yeah I think uh it's it's really
really hard to build services that work
for everyone and that do the right thing
and we're kind of also we're trying to
do the next step of actually sending
your like filling out your form and
actually sending it digitally m which
currently isn't possible in Germany as a
private person you can't send anything
into the digital justice system in
Germany only lawyers can do this this is
supposed to come who knows like q1 this
year supposingly but postponed um so
yeah I would love to chat afterwards and
yeah accessibility is super important
and we're trying to test this and it's
really hard but at least I it's really
nice that you're doing this and people
are working this yeah yeah and I I
should say all the all the tools that
I've built like I'm I'm still like a
practicing lawyer and I think
unfortunately we like any human rights
system that's not radical in nature has
to be conformed to the actual like the
limits of the system so most of the
tools that I create will help people
that'll really reduce the distress of a
lawyer right it like tries to take away
80% of their work where they can just
focus on the substantive aspect so even
if you do have this form filling
exercise as you've correctly pointed out
you still have to send it to a lawyer a
lawyer will never believe anyone apart
from themselves so they'll still check
everything but if you can make their
lives easier they could you know focus
on more clients per day focus on the
tougher challenges and Australia and New
Zealand where these applications are
predominantly made apart from my lights
or info unfortunately I think a lawyer
still has to be in the
picture next question over
here first of all thank you so much this
has been enlightening um one thing that
I wonder is in the aspect I understand
that you are Building Technology and
that you are working with h these people
who need Aid my question is how do you
get to those people because most of the
time when they need that help they don't
know where to find it and that is
something that as activists we are like
we have like all these spaces that we
can help but there's no way to reach
someone that really needs it like right
now because we are small we are not
fully funded yeah yeah so I mean this is
my personal experience I don't know if I
can provide advice generally but I've
always worked as a lawyer and then in
activist communities and I know the
issue that you're talking about so like
the police accountability um app that
I've made certain communities in
Australia will see any app as something
that they can't trust and rely but I was
part of Melbourne activist legal support
where we go into protests and then
provide legal advice to people that have
stopped completely I sue the police for
a living basically so I did have um like
I did have groups where thank you I had
groups that I could I could gain trust
and knowledge and I think that's also
another big thing with technology like
you have to be invested in that
Community like you have to be part of it
for that really to have like any type of
hold and Trust I don't know if that
answers your question but that's how I
went about it totally it's exactly what
to the microphone please no
yes further question
questions apart from oh behind me
sorry hi uh I was listening to you on
live stream and I just rushed here
because I didn't want to miss the
question but this is not a question
actually I'm a designer and I was
wondering if there is any way we could
help you do these things because uh uh I
work with accessibility and all kinds of
guidelines related to colors and
everything that uh is there and uh I
really like what you're doing and I uh I
would have to chat that's all okay yeah
100% let's talk after
King further questions let me check
behind my back no in the
audience someone there who could build a
fact interface for the German
government yeah of course yes over there
give me a
second um I wanted to ask the question
after the last one you said that you are
very active in the community and that
you talk to people in protests that were
mistreated by police yeah is that most
of cuz that as lets me ask the question
like is there anybody else you can reach
or is it mostly just the people directly
in a community directly there are you
mostly working with the people that are
in your communities or do you have ways
to reach out outside of those or maybe
people that don't have any communities
oh I I wouldn't know how to Lee people
that have no communities if they have
yeah I mean I've never thought about it
like that again I can give you like my
personal
experience um so most of the police
accountability work that I did as a
lawyer like either working in like
volunteer organizations or Ling against
the police happened in like a span of
about 3 to 4 years and in that time it
took me about 2 to 3 years to get into
the right networks and in these networks
like let's say I'm I'm working as a
strategic litigation lawyer you'll be
working with a Community Law Center and
then you'll also be working with the
police accountability
organization those two organizations
will get community members normally a
youth member normally someone who's like
part of that like uh part of that
community and has like a political space
in there and then you inform those
community members of what you have and
then they can distribute it if they'd
like but I I think if I see most of like
the downloads that I have for a lot of
like the applications I do are like
Global so if you type in know your
rights uh into the play store like the
police accountability app comes to the
top but that's just for New Zealand you
know so it's kind of like like you're
right it's like getting to that
Community is definitely like the hardest
part but again it's like you have to
just be
there all right and with that we at the
end of our time thank you very much so
please uh give a very warm Round of
Applause V thank you very much thank
[Applause]
you
[Music]