Digital Equity at Work: Social Work Responses for Marginalized Communities

This roundtable aims to explore how social work research and practice can help mitigate digital exclusion in the evolving workplace, particularly for marginalized communities. It will examine pathways to digital equity through training, inclusive technology design, and policy innovation. Finding and/or retaining meaningful work is increasingly dependent upon having basic digital literacy and access to resources for lifelong training and education. Rapid technological changes aimed at increasing worker productivity and employer competitiveness is radically changing the nature of work and jobs, increasing worker precarity. The rate of change in the workplace is accelerating, reflected by a more diverse workforce, a rising consciousness of social and environmental impacts, and the juggernaut of artificial intelligence. Communities of color and marginalized groups such as migrants, older adults, and people with disabilities may find themselves disadvantaged in this context, owing to a continued digital divide with implications for social inclusion, human rights, and equity, as they face obstacles to workplace digital technology access and workforce participation. The workplace is increasingly characterized by the extensive use of technologies, running the gamut from information technologies for communication, to artificial intelligence (i.e., robots, augmented reality, internet of things) designed to collaborate with workers. Technology has become critical to workplace success for workers generally; including social workers engaging with client systems. Workplace equity stands to benefit from the emergence of service systems engineering in the design of human-machine interactions. For digital social work research, policy and practice to provide a way forward in this complex and rapidly changing context, we must design and test innovative workforce development pathways; paradoxically trading off speed for adaptability, while blending technical, social justice and empowerment designs in novel approaches. Vulnerable populations and communities of color are often left out of the policy design process, as are the social workers who support them. Typically, the policies that exist to support vulnerable individuals are created by policy makers who have a limited understanding about the specific needs of vulnerable people, including access to technology, for which innovative, participatory policies and workplace practices are needed. The roundtable will provide examples of social work research exploring AI literacy, the alignment of digital technologies and social justice values, the design of empowering social service workplace technologies to ensure that vulnerable workers and communities of color will have the skills and knowledge necessary to participate in the design of meaningful technology-mediated work. Three short presentations will be made to spark discussion and guide future resources in this domain: (1) AI literacy training and education for social workers, (2) Aligning workplace technology development and deployment with social justice and human values, and (3) equitable digital social service workplaces.on 4-14-2025-->