Citizen Science for All?

UNTERFRAUNE, E.; FABIAN, C.; CASADO, J.; DE LA VEGA, G.; GARCIA, B.; DIAZ-MERCED, W.

Viena

Conferencia; International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction; 2021

Citizen science is about democratising access to science for all citi-zens. A crucial question in this respect however is, whether  democratisation of access to research in terms of reaching and involving diverse citizens actually takes place in citizen science projects. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the case. The EU funded project Reinforce adheres to principles of inclusiveness and monitors and evaluates whether these principles are being met. Safeguarding thatcitizen science projects are inclusive means addressing technical as well as psychological and sociological aspects. On the technical side, in order for people with visual impairments to participate, the Reinforce Citizen Science projects, which are implemented on the Zooniverse platform, have to be made accessible.The software SonoUno has been developed to transform images into sound signals. A second strand for reaching diverse target groups is the participatory engagement strategy of the project. The applied evaluation process systematically targets quantitative and qualitative methods to evaluate the inclusivity approach of the project. The paper seeks to discuss the inclusivity aspect of citizen science projects in general, to then describe the project Reinforce with its strategies to make citizen scientists projects more inclusive especially for people with visualimpairments, technically, psychologically and sociologically. Furthermore, we will share the evaluation framework that has been elaborated to monitor the diversity of participants and inclusivity of the citizen science projects.