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An Introduction and Overview

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Disability and Technology

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Abstract

The question of technology and disability has provoked an array of academic and clinical work which, although disparate, shares the objective of enhancing social or bodily function. Although diverse models of disability attempt to locate the role technology plays in disabled people’s lives, historically concern has been directed towards enhancing the human condition or to be more precise to address the function of technology in relation to facilitating what Nussbaum calls capabilities (Nussbaum 2011). Of course, extreme technocentric constructions can both misread the benefits of technology and also offer misplaced hope as to the potential of technology. This is evident in recent discussions of ‘cure’ in spinal injury via stem cell therapy, exoskeletal shells and thought-activated prostheses (Breen 2015; Marchal-Crespo and Reinkensmeyer 2009). These approaches, in say clinical rehabilitation or engineering, focus on ‘high-tech’ interventions, often for those with the most significant impairments. At the opposite extreme are social-determinist views, which assert that technology can play only a small part in helping to produce an enabling society (Oliver 1990; Zola 1989). Both views distract attention from the myriad ways in which technology (low/high, cheap/expensive, tangible/virtual) can aid choices in daily living and independence for disabled people. It is clear that technological ‘gold standards’, both of technologies themselves and their wider techno-social support systems, may simply miscomprehend the gains technology affords for many disabled people. However, we do need to be cautious about the claims made of technology, of its ability to improve the lives of disabled people. Industry, professional and early adopter enthusiasm may detract from the limits of a given technology (Hannukainen and Hölttä-Otto 2006). Why else is so much technology not used or under-used?

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    Alan Roulstone

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Roulstone, A. (2016). An Introduction and Overview. In: Disability and Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-45042-5_1

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