Digitalis’s Government Practice helps governments to understand and navigate the digital environment, and manage its risks. In a time when rapid developments in AI and social media are creating new challenges for governments, James Hann, Head of Digitalis’s Digital Risk team and Government Practice, explains how we work with governments to provide intelligence and training on debates and issues that are critical to their safety, security and wellbeing.
We have always maintained a wide range of clients at Digitalis, and have supported government clients in different ways since our inception. Due to our expertise in understanding how information and content appear and travel online, we have typically focused our work with governments on understanding how harmful content spreads and is made accessible to users.
Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have rightly got the industry talking about the risks and threats that the various tools, models, and algorithms pose to democracy, sensible debate, and individual privacy. The ever-increasing availability and accessibility of generative AI tools such as imagery/video content creators, and large language models (LLMs), has created a pace of change that governments and regulators are struggling to keep up with.
As well as the risks, there are of course many benefits that these tools bring, and a key challenge currently facing some governments is how to upskill sufficiently to embrace these benefits. This is one of the key areas that we support our clients on.
The threat that mis- and disinformation pose to our societies is now relatively well-understood, and recent geopolitical events have served to highlight that this threat is growing. In the current conflict in Israel/Gaza, there are numerous examples of years-old footage and imagery from previous events being passed off as current content. Changes to social media algorithms and operating models are also creating issues that, in some cases, are actually reversing progress in areas such as content moderation and fact-checking.
Next year, over two billion people are due to take part in over 50 elections across the world. The scale of the challenge is significant, and as a result we are seeing requests to support governments in areas where the public sector is lacking in expertise and experience. This includes supporting foreign governments with nascent communications functions to understand the true extent and reach of harmful campaigns occurring within their societies, and helping to identify mitigation measures to protect against these hostile narratives.
One particular challenge that governments and regulators are currently grappling with is the availability of certain downloadable LLMs. Some of the models allow for the editing of code, which in turn allows for controls and restrictions on use to be stripped away. Hostile groups and actors are using these tools to create highly damaging and harmful content.
We are fortunate at Digitalis to have not only some of the leading search engine experts, but a full team of developers who support our work in identifying mis- and disinformation. We use a combination of our proprietary technology platform and expertise in investigating open sources to help us build insights on these challenges.
We recently supported a government who suspected a hostile third-party actor was attempting to influence public discourse around key events in their country. We were able to demonstrate the presence of coordinated inauthentic behaviour (CIB) within online conversations, and provide recommendations on how to tackle it.
We advise government clients on various aspects of their digital strategy, and frequently assist with the type of challenges discussed here. In 2021, Digitalis established a dedicated Disinformation Investigations Unit, which conducts our investigations and advisory work as well as carrying out sophisticated research and analysis of trends on these topics.
We have been working with the Radicalisation Awareness Network (RAN) for a couple of years now, and are delighted to be able to contribute in a small way to various events and training opportunities. The RAN is an EU Commission-funded body that comprises a network of practitioners working across society to increase understanding and awareness of harmful and radicalising content. It has been a thoroughly enjoyable experience to collaborate in this way on such an important topic for societies today.
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Digitalis
We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email webrequests@digitalis.com
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all of the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside of it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers), both for Windows and for MAC users.
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs, there may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to webrequests@digitalis.com