Engineers from the University of Florida (UF) are leading an effort to understand how groups like people with disabilities, those with a low socioeconomic status, children and the elderly are marginalized by current technologies like smartphones and video conferencing and how current and future technologies can be designed to be more inclusive and secure.
The research, funded by a $7.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation, will focus on changing the fundamental approach to security and privacy in computing so these communities are considered the norm rather than the exception, or worse, an afterthought, said Kevin Butler, the project's Principal Investigator and Professor in UF’s Department of Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE).