Access, Agency and Normality: the Wheelchair and the Internet as Mediators of Disability

Abstract

Since the late 1970s, the recognition that disability is a matter of politics rather than simply a ‘problem’ of medicine has gained much ground. Similarly, the idea that technology is a political rather than a neutral tool also grew over much the same period (Pinch and Bijker, 1984; Winner, 1980). Yet, despite both engaging with important questions about patterns of power, authority and the human experience, these two fields of study have largely remained separate. In an endeavour to bring them together, this chapter, based on two projects from the IHT Programme, will draw an analogy between wheelchairs and Internet technologies to explore issues of access, control and the autonomy of disabled people. While these are two very different technologies, and the authors bring two very different styles of analysis to bear on the problems, the common thread that ties the two together is that both Internet and wheelchair technologies are sites of political conflict.