App: INCLUSITE
Hosted on GitHub:
Hosted in ArcGIS Online:
Mission statement
Background
Hello! Bienvenue! In Canada, those are the 2 official greetings in English and French respectively. Around the world there are about 7000 different languages [1] and the 2016 Canadian Census reported the use of around 215 of them [2]. As a bilingual country, Canada strives to offer English and French speaking Canadians goods and services in both languages wherever possible. But this still leaves a lot of Canadians blocked by a language barrier. In the United Nations goals for sustainable development, they specified that certain groups of individuals, such as older persons, persons with disabilities and migrants or refugees are the most vulnerable and have been hit the hardest with the COVID-19 pandemic [3]. Specifically, an intersection of these groups greatly suffer if faced with inequitable access to goods and services through a language barrier.
Motivation
We wanted to explore the equity of language access for individuals across Canada and compare it to other social factors. Our hope is that large companies and governmental agencies can use this analysis and results to better adapt their services for as many Canadians as possible.
Team Statement
Our goal was to take a unique approach to analyzing inequality among Canadians. We wanted to explore any associations between language usage and a variety of social factors. The hope is that this application will be interesting for the general public to explore the language diversity across the country as well as in their specific area and compare that to other aspects of their social sphere. Additionally, in our Next Steps section we explain further how we hope this application can be used as a starting point for further analysis and action by government agencies and other large corporations.
Video Presentation
Documentation
Team Members
Ivy Liang: Ivy is a 3rd year undergraduate student at UofT studying Human Geography, Statistics and GIS. She hopes in the future to be able to further continue her interests in cities, data and geospatial technologies. In her free time, she enjoys skiing, playing the drums and listening to music!
Kelly Zhu: Kelly is a 2nd year undergraduate student studying Engineering Science at the University of Toronto. She was a developer for this project and enjoys learning new things in her spare time!