Technology for People, not Disabilities

Communication technologies and new media promise to ‘revolutionize our lives’ by breaking down barriers (Goggin and Newell, 2003, p. 13) and expanding access for disabled people¹ (Ellis and Kent, 2011, p. 2). Technology is often characterised as liberating – making up for social, educational and physical barriers to full participation in society. Often viewed in very utopian ways, technology promises to liberate us from the confines of embodiment and provide us with a futuristic antidote for impairment. Through technological advancements, disability would simply fade away or become a largely inconsequential difference. (p.192)

This introduction troubles the naive belief that we can overcome the disabling designs and practices of the built world in a utopian digital world. It immediately points out the underlying ableist assumptions that are encoded in the the way technology is designed and used. Until the ableism is drawn out, designs will continue to be undermined by it.

As Davis (2005) in his book Enforcing Normalcy argues, although we might perceive a particular mode of communication as normal or natural, ‘like all signifying practices, [it] is not natural but based on sets of assumptions about the body, about reality, and of course about power (p. 16). Thus, because technology is very much a part of the larger social context, such normative assumptions about how bodies are supposed to operate are deeply embedded in all aspects of technology. Moreover, these ideologies of ability and normalcy are so ‘imbricated . . . in our thinking and practices’, that we often fail to notice their ‘patterns, authority, contradictions, and influence’ (Siebers, 2008, p. 9). (p.192)

Speaks to the insidious, unexamined power and privilege of the able POV.

…the norms in on-line contexts often mirror (and even exaggerate) the norms of everyday society.

Why would we assume we could do better without a reckoning?

…virtual worlds continue to privilege the able body by conforming to the social realities and norms of the non-virtual world. In fact, the reproduction of the non-virtual world into the virtual world highlights the ways that normalcy and able-bodiedness operate as a compulsory system of identity that must be replicated, despite its inevitable impossibility (McRuer, 2006). In other words, through technology we ‘enforce normalcy’ (Davis, 2005), at the same time we fail to acknowledge normalcy as a fictional and unstable category, which is inherently unattainable. (p.193)

I’m interested in exploring further how the fiction or mythology of normal/healthy/able is also conflated in our culture with notions of morality, honour and value. When the hero is described as, “Never sick a day in his life. Never missed a day of work.” we further conflate ability and work ethic. That hero is pervasive in colonial, puritanical mythology.

We then take that unattainable hero and map uncritically it to what technology could and should do. It can make up for bodily deficiencies. It can attain economic efficiencies. Technology can work 24/7. Technology can make things easier, better, faster, smarter… But there are mythologies to untangle there. And we are seeing the environmental devastation, autocratic destruction that’s come from this colonial and ableist hero’s journey.

But then what of my own adoration for a mythic heroine who paints or writes or transforms worlds from a sickbed, wheelchair, or asylum? Frida Khalo, Janet Frame, Agnes Martin, Audre Lorde, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Syrus Marcus Ware, Alice Sheppard and so, so many more? I am unsettled in my body, and motivated, as were/are they. These are different heroes. How different might the technology revolution be that follows the intersecting trajectories of these heroes journeys? Alice Sheppard’s transformative ramps (sorry if you hit a pay wall) lead me to consider digitally accessible and transformational ramps for learning… how might they inspire/ help us reimagine ed tech?