Balla Khadang: Google AMP Conference invites Kurdish youth from Koya to present
“With the power of technology, I can never be silenced,” Dashni said about her work. “I know a lot of girls in Iraqi Kurdistan, and we need technology that works for us.” However, some women are barred from installing social media apps. AMP builds an app-like experience that exists within the browser, or within a browser view inside another app such as Messenger.
In this way, AMP can be used to shatter social barriers that limit the reach and impact not just of technology but of physical spaces as well. The 100 Women Street Gallery features women who embody feminist narratives, but the core of the gallery’s written content is distributed through AMP pages that can be loaded in Messenger using Messenger codes. There are opportunities to even spread targeted content as an extension of the physical space.
It is a bittersweet and ironic twist, for her own presentation at the Google AMP conference — a talk that is essentially about accessibility — she is unable to attend to present it herself. I will co-present with her using pre-recorded videos of her sections.
However, when speaking of her life, she has had many similar experiences of living at the margins where progressivism and prejudice collide in a uniquely 21st-century manner.
