We provide a detailed study of two properties of spaces and pairs of spaces, the surjection property and the-surjection property, that were recently introduced to characterize the notion of computable type arising from computability theory. For a class of spaces including the finite simplicial complexes, we develop techniques to prove or disprove these properties using homotopy and homology theories, and give applications of these results. In particular, we answer an open question on the computable type property, showing that it is not preserved by taking products.