Universal access isn’t just building ramps. It’s asking who was never invited to the building. — Octavia E. Butler
Last Night
I assembled a round table of our science fiction writers, and these modern-day prophets of science, technology, and history are dismayed by what has become of their dreams. Their reasons surprised me. Octavia E. Butler captured the essence of their concern—it seems to have nothing to do with science, or does it? While we continue to build and advance, we leave many people behind. We never invited them to join, even if we used their labor to create it.
The Prophets Have Been Telling Us. We Weren’t Listening.
We have reduced Universal Access to broadband maps and device giveaways. This isn't what Octavia meant. Butler wasn't asking for coverage and speed tests. Her question wasn't "How fast is the internet?" but rather "Who got left off the blueprint?"
Butler belongs to a lineage of prophets who taught us that justice means radical inclusion, not polite invitation. These prophets were more than technicians. They were architects of liberation. We had hoped that they were architecting our liberation, but we are still waiting.
- bell hooks taught us that education could be the practice of freedom, but only if we build classrooms with love and an understanding of oppression. Instead, we use oppression to educate. This is not working out well.
- Audre Lorde reminded us that the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house—and Universal Access must be a new house, built by the hands that were never allowed near the old one.
- James Baldwin showed us that the system wasn't broken—it was built this way. So we must ask: who was never allowed through the front door?
- Paulo Freire taught us that the oppressed must name their world, not receive a user manual they had no part in writing.
- Toni Cade Bambara declared that the artist's role is to make revolution irresistible. The same applies to our technologists.
So Let’s Redefine Universal Access
Universal Access is not broadband. It is not device counts.
It is not monthly adoption stats. It is not a checkbox on a compliance form. It is this question:
Was this created with the understanding that every person could walk through its door?
Ask this of every tool, every policy, every AI: Can people with disabilities use it? Can undocumented people trust it? Can those living in poverty afford it? Can people with trauma approach it? Can those who've never had a voice shape it? If the answer is no, you don't have technology—you have a barrier.
And Universal Access Isn’t Just Letting People In…
It's letting the wisdom of everyone shape and reshape the architecture, as their memories reroute the wiring, their grief widens the doors, and their imagination builds new wings that no one else could have imagined. Until we do this, it's not Universal—it's just power pretending to care.