On February 9, the All-Russian video conference “Together for the Family Internet: the Role and Opportunities of Libraries” was held in a hybrid format at the Russian State Children’s Library, organized as part of the Safe Runet Week (February 7–14) in partnership with the Safe Internet Center “Ne Dopusti”.
The meetings were attended by leading researchers of media and information literacy, experts on the interaction of children with information, as well as representatives of the library community, implementing their own projects to ensure the information security of children in the regions.
Victoria Bunchuk, a representative of the Smart Internet Foundation, established by the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ, spoke about the foundation's flagship project, the .ДЕТИ, as well as the Smart Journal, a digital publication dedicated to the children's Internet industry. Victoria noted that .ДЕТИ is an online space of trust, which is a combination of high-quality and safe content on one platform.
“The main advantage of this domain zone is its security. All websites in the .ДЕТИ are constantly monitored for malicious activity. Therefore, if any malicious content or other digital vulnerabilities suddenly appear on websites registered in this zone, then such websites are either completely removed from the zone (in especially advanced cases), or we contact the website owner to fix the problem,” Victoria said.
She also noted that another important advantage of the . ДЕТИ is that the domains in it are Cyrillic, which means that the website address can be easily remembered and found without even searching. Victoria Bunchuk also told the audience about the most interesting and useful websites in the .ДЕТИ domain, collected in a special catalogue.
Olga Yakovleva, Head of the project department of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ, presented the educational project of the Center “Study the Internet & Govern It!”. She shared with the audience her experience of creating a special game module for blind users - it became compatible with screen readers.
“According to data provided by our partners, about 10% out of 11.5 million people with disabilities in Russia have a disability associated with visual impairment. For this category of users, it is very important that digital accessibility is ensured, and websites are compatible with special screen readers that translate text into speech. We wondered how to approach this topic and where to start. Together with colleagues from Everland, we evaluated the “Study the Internet & Govern It!” website and mobile application's accessibility for blind people. After that, we found developers who can make a special module for our interactive portal. After its development and testing, we were certified and received the sign of accessibility for users with disabilities,” Olga Yakovleva said.
Olga also announced the start of the All-Russian Family IT Marathon, registration for which will open on March 2. The topic of the IT marathon this year will be “Digital Literacy”. In the first stage, which will take place before the online tournament, participants will be asked to make a video podcast on the topic “The Teacher Who Conquered the Internet” as a task for additional points. The tasks of the tournament itself will be devoted to information, media, communication, computer literacy, future technologies and Internet security.
The recording of the plenary part of the videoconference “Together for the Family Internet: the Role and Opportunities of Libraries” is available on the official YouTube channel of the Russian State Children's Library.
