Marginalization of minorities has been prevalent in practically every institution, framework, and principle of social development in Western history. It has only been recently that significant action has been taken to heed equity and diversity in these areas, which has in some cases resulted in major overhaul of such structures. Despite this however, the issues still manifests itself almost everywhere, most significantly so in the more complex aspects of society; income, judicial systems, politics, etc. When these systems have been under development with little consideration of these minorities for so long, it takes significant time and effort to effect meaningful change.

Without consideration of equity and diversity from the very beginning, the disparity it generates only becomes more and more magnified as the system develops. This is why when development emerges in new areas, it is vital to take careful consideration of diversity seriously and immediately. One of these frameworks is digital literacy: the digitization of the modern world is fairly recent, and overlaps with the combatting of underrepresentation and systemic marginalization and prejudice. Therefore, as digital literacy becomes a more pervasive issue and undergoes significant development and institutionalization, a rare opportunity emerges to make diversity and inclusion a fundamental element of digital literacy, where every progression and expansion proceeds with its consideration. This is not to say that there is no injustice or inequity already established in digital literacy, but it makes it so much easier to tackle these issues when they are not so anciently entrenched.

Maha Bali is one of the many advocates bringing light to this issue and affirming its vitality. She suggests a variety of methods for attacking inequity in digital literacy, as well as proactive methods to maintain equity for the future. One of these is a model she calls the ‘Rumi Cheese Model’, based off of the Swiss Cheese Model, a widely accepted and acclaimed accident causation and risk analysis model. The Swiss Cheese Model likens a system to multiple slices of Swiss cheese stacked consecutively, in which each each layer represents a failure defence, and each hole represents a lapse or weakness in the defense. The model theorizes that the failure of a system is never due to a fault in any one defence, but rather that it occurs where the ‘holes’ in multiple defences align when they are compounded.

Although the Swiss Cheese Model finds its most prominent applications in safety protocol, such as emergency response protocols and aviation safety, or in engineered systems, such as computer software and complex machinery, Bali applies the model to digital literacy. She does so however, with a caveat, which allows the mechanical nature of the model to be applicable to the socially delicate and complex nature of digital literacy. The ‘Rumi Cheese Model’, likens the protection of digital literacy from the adulateration of inequity to slices of Rumi cheese rather than Swiss, with the difference being that Rumi cheese contains black peppercorns that Swiss does not, but with all of the same holes that Swiss cheese does. The black peppercorns are a polarizing incorporation; some love them while others find them to ruin the cheese. This polarization is analogous to the human variability associated with diversity, where no one ‘defense’, or accomodation, is favourable for the demographic to which the accomdation was designed for. In the Swiss Cheese Model, a defense can either fail or withstand; there is no in-between, which does not hold true in the context of digital literacy. This emphasises the importance of humanizing digital literacy in establishing and maintaining equity, diversity, and inclusion, rather than simplifying it or attempting to conform it to a mechanical model.