This session is facilitated by Ed Johnson-Williams
About this session
We’ll present Open Rights Group’s Blocked project: https://blocked.org.uk
In the UK, Internet filters are blocking crucial websites for millions of people. Come and find out what you can do to help keep these websites available for people.
Websites being blocked include those of charities, businesses, schools, sex education, LGBTQ+ communities, mental health and addiction support services, and survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence. Website owners often don’t know their site is being blocked.
In this session, you’ll learn about this issue and how it affects people. You’ll also see and work with the tools UK-based digital rights campaign Open Rights Group has built to make it easier to find out if a site is blocked and unblock incorrectly-blocked sites.
Context
Blocked allows people to check whether a website is blocked by the parental control filters of the UK’s major broadband and mobile Internet providers. If the website is blocked, you can use Blocked to report the mistake to the ISPs so they can correct it. Hundreds of websites have been incorrectly blocked. Website owners often don’t know this is happening.
The session
We’ll give people a card with a website on it like a domestic violence charity, ‘Tesco’, or a drain unblocking company. Commonly-blocked websites will are red and rarely-blocked sites are green. People then discuss why the various sites were blocked or not. This highlights the unfair blocking.
Then we’ll show the core features of Blocked. Then we’ll ask the participants for feedback on new website features.
Goals of this session
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To raise awareness of website blocking in the UK, the impact on vulnerable groups, and the Blocked.org.uk project which lets people detect and report incorrectly blocked websites
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To get feedback on new features that Open Rights Group is adding to Blocked