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Technology for people, not disabilities: ensuring
access and inclusionjrs3_1230 192..200
Alan Foley and Beth A. Ferri
Syracuse University
Key words: Inclusive technology, assistive technology, accessibility, disability and technology.
The potential of technology to connect people and
provide access to education, commerce, employ-
ment and entertainment has never been greater or
more rapidly changing. Communication technolo-
gies and new media promise to ‘revolutionize our
lives’ by breaking down barriers and expanding
access for disabled people. Yet, it is also true that
technology can create unexpected and under-
critiqued forms of social exclusion for disabled
people. In addition to exploring some of the ways
that even (or especially) assistive technology can
result in new forms of social exclusion, we also
propose alternative ways of thinking about inclusive
and accessible (as opposed to assistive) technology
and provide some very practical ways that acces-
sible technologies would promote greater access
and flexibility for disabled students and adults. We
contend that technology should be conceived of as
a global, accessible and inclusive concept, not one
that requires a qualifier based on who it is for.
Introduction: complicating the meaning of access
The potential of technology to connect people and provide
a means of access to education, commerce, employment
and entertainment has never been greater or more rapidly
changing. Communication technologies and new media
promise to ‘revolutionize our lives’ by breaking down bar-
riers (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 parti-
cipation 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, disabi-
lity would simply fade away or become a largely inconse-
quential difference.
A powerful undercurrent reflected in these assumptions is
that assistive technologies in particular ‘level’ the playing
field; however, we believe the relationship between technol-
ogy and access is paradoxical. On the one hand, disabled
people increasingly have access to educational opportuni-
ties that were not available to them in the past. As technolo-
gies become smaller, faster and cheaper, technology is also
becoming easier to use and procure. Increasingly, the tech-
nology divide is less about access to technology and more
about the deeper underlying meanings of ‘access’. In other
words, access is more than a bifurcation between ‘haves’
and ‘have-nots’. To more fully capture the deeper meanings
of access, we advocate a shift in the discourse on access
away from binaries created by ability and performance
towards notions of equity that qualify and contextualise
technology-centred disparities within local and societal
histories, values, languages and perceptions of success and
disproportion.
For instance, although technology is typically associated
with access and integration, technology can also isolate
people, creating unique forms of social exclusion. These
exclusions can be the results of formal, mechanistic pro-
cesses, such as the discursive practices around assistive
technology in primary and secondary school settings, where
technology is matched prescriptively to student ‘impair-
ments’. Exclusion, however, can also be subtler. Techno-
logy, for instance, privileges particular ways of being,
which are grounded in normative, social, cultural and eco-
nomic practices, further reified in the design, manufacture,
marketing and implementation of technology. In other
words, technology is designed in ways that reflect taken-
for-granted ideas about what constitutes normal.
These ideas about how we should operate are embedded
within technology and are reflective of an ableist worldview
– one that would view, for example, a cochlear implant as a
‘desirable and necessary’ technological advancement over
deafness, which would be perceived from this vantage point
as ‘pathological and disabling’ rather than as a linguistic
minority identity reflective of a deaf culture perspective
(Goggin and Newell, 2003, p. 11). As Davis (2005) in his
book Enforcing Normalcy argues, although we might per-
ceive 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,
1Person-first terminology (i.e., person with a disability rather than disabled person)
is considered preferable in many professional journals. The idea behind person-first
terminology is that the disability should not circumvent the individual who has it.
Increasingly disabled activists and academics argue that person-first terminology
implies that disability is somehow a diminished aspect of the self, rather than an
aspect of identity that is a source of pride. They reject person-first terminology, as do
we in this paper.
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Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs ·Volume 12 ·Number 4 ·2012 192–200
doi: 10.1111/j.1471-3802.2011.01230.x
192
© 2012 The Authors. Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs © 2012 NASEN. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and
350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
and of course about power (p. 16). Thus, because techno-
logy 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...inourthinking and practices’, that we often
fail to notice their ‘patterns, authority, contradictions, and
influence’ (Siebers, 2008, p. 9).
Cyberspace, in particular, appears to offer the promise of
free-flowing worlds where identity, embodiment and sub-
jectivity can be fashioned and refashioned at will (Goggin
and Newell, 2003). In online contexts, the postmodern indi-
vidual can choose to inhabit different genders, racial back-
grounds, sexualities and even species. Physical attributes,
too, can be deliberately crafted in online contexts – allow-
ing individuals to acquire disabilities and, just as easily,
shed them. The postmodern cyberbody then, becomes more
of a choice than a static reality. As such, technology pro-
mises exciting new worlds where bodily ‘limitations can be
transcended, and new freedoms found...[particularly for]
people with disabilities, [who are seen as] special benefi-
ciaries’ of technology2(p. 110). Yet, despite all of these
choices, the norms in on-line contexts often mirror (and
even exaggerate) the norms of everyday society. Similar
to standards of attractiveness or gender, racial and class
hierarchies, disability, as constructed in on-line contexts,
often replicates the social meanings of non-virtual worlds
(Goggin and Newell, 2003). Again, it is impossible to
separate technology from the larger social context.
In fact, instead of eliminating disability, technology often
creates ‘new dimensions of disability’ (Goggin and Newell,
2003, p. 131). In electronic forums, for instance, disability
disclosure shifts in unpredictable ways, as does what is
considered an obvious (or visible) disability. In a virtual
classroom environment a student with dyslexia might find
that ‘disclosure will be unavoidable’, whereas a wheelchair
user will have to consciously decide if he or she wants to
disclose their disability to their on-line classmates or
instructors (Ellis and Kent, 2011, p. 120). Although what
are perceived to be obvious or visible disabilities shift in
on-line contexts, the idea of norm or normalcy remains
in place.
Despite calling into question the relevance of bodily appear-
ance and difference, in practice virtual worlds continue to
privilege the able body by conforming to the social realities
and norms of the non-virtual world. In fact, the reproduc-
tion of the non-virtual world into the virtual world high-
lights 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.
Rather than assume that technology is always liberating to
individuals with disabilities, in the remaining sections of
this article we shift the typical focus on assistive technolo-
gies to explore what it might mean for all technology to be
inclusive and accessible. We argue that in the ever more
wired and socially networked world in which we live, the
lack of accessibility in many electronic spaces create new
forms of exclusion at the same time they are heralded as
expanding opportunities for individuals to connect to an
ever-expanding social world. By examining ways that tech-
nology creates unexpected and under-critiqued (Lanier,
2010) forms of social exclusion for disabled people, we also
propose new ways of thinking about accessible (as opposed
to assistive) technology. Rather than recreating a two-tier
system, in which technology for disabled people is seen as
specialised and specific, we advocate for a more inclusive
view we are calling accessible technology, informed by
disability-specific ontologies. We conclude the article with
some of the practical ways that accessible technologies
would promote greater access and flexibility for disabled
students and adults. First, however, we will look at some of
the ways that assistive technology creates subtle forms of
exclusion.
Social meanings of (assistive) technology
Discourse on technology in relation to disability often
focuses on the potential of assistive technology to replace
human supports and allow greater independence. Thus,
technology that is disability focused or designed for
disabled people is often ‘conceptualized as a form of
“care”...administering to the biomedical/functional/
normalizing needs of disabled bodies as commonly
defined by service providers...andrehabilitative experts’
(Campbell, 2009, p. 52) rather than disabled people them-
selves, who, more than any other group of individuals, have
had a unique and long-standing ‘erotic consubstantial
liaison with technologies’ (p. 45) – a relationship that could
inform the development of technology for all potential
users. As Davis (2002) writes, a disability-informed theory
of dismodernism signals a corrective to the myths of both
modernist and postmodernist views about the relationship
between the body and technology. He writes that,
‘The dismodern era ushers in the concept that
difference is what all of us have in common. That
identity is not fixed but malleable. That technology is
not separate but part of the body. That dependence,
not individual independence, is the rule.’ (p. 26)
Conversely, the assumed goal of assistive technology
is ‘anti-dependency’ and assimilation (p. 53), reflecting
ableist and normative values of independence and compe-
tence. Besides downplaying ways that technologies require
their own maintenance and care, assistive technology per-
petuates a myth of independence that has been critiqued
by disability rights activists and scholars, who argue that
2Of course, there is a certain contradiction in relying on science or technology to
resolve or ameliorate the very problems that were created or constructed by science
in the first place (Sheldon, 2004). It should also be noted that utopian thinking, as
evidenced by the many utopian movements and communities that sprung up in the
United States during the 18th and 19th centuries, often shared elements of eugenic
thinking.
Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs, 12 192–200
193© 2012 The Authors. Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs © 2012 NASEN
perceiving disabled people as dependent obscures the
myriad ways that all people are interdependent on one
another and on technology.
Disabled people are using a range of online tools and tech-
nologies to subvert mainstream media’s representation of
disability, to counter negative stereotypes and to ‘offer more
complex realities of disability’ (Ellis and Kent, 2011, p. 56)
and new forums for activism. Through digital media, blogs,
social networking, Second Life and YouTube, disabled
people are finding a wider audience for counter narratives
that talk back and subvert mainstream representations of
disability (Ellis and Kent, 2011; Sheldon, 2004). An article
in Wired magazine illustrates the ways people are using
technology to challenge notions of identity (Wolman,
2008). The article describes how adults labelled as Autistic
are using technology to challenge essentialising and deficit-
based understandings of autism and to illustrate alternative
models of intelligence and cognition. Amanda Baggs, a
woman who identifies as Autistic, used YouTube to post
videos, like one called ‘In My Language’3, to demonstrate
more nuanced representations of people with autism to
the larger community. Baggs points out the irony in the
assumption that her typical engagement with the world
around her, which involves ongoing tactile, kinaesthetic and
auditory interaction with her environment, is often charac-
terised as being in a ‘world of her own’ or ‘trapped in her
mind’. She counters that, ‘whereas if I interact with a much
more limited set of responses and only react to a limited part
of my surroundings [specifically language], people claim
that I am opening up to true interaction with the world’
(Baggs, 2007). Uses of video, like Baggs’, can be effective
in challenging normative assumptions that presume that a
person labelled with autism who cannot verbally commu-
nicate is not intelligent. The capacity of individuals to
represent the complexity of their lives and subjectivities
should raise questions about testing intelligence with tools
predicated on verbal communication.
Yet, although virtual worlds offer much potential for
disability-based consciousness raising and politicisation
(Ellis and Kent, 2011), they also pose navigational and
accessibility challenges to many users with disabilities. For
instance, many online forums fail to meet accessibility
guidelines (i.e., Twitter, for instance, continues to be inac-
cessible). Websites, as well as various forms of hardware
and software, are often quite inaccessible, particularly for
blind or visually impaired users. Moreover, we have barely
scratched the surface in terms of thinking about web
accessibility for individuals with cognitive disabilities
(Braddock, Rissolo and Thompson et al., 2004).
Moreover, given that disabled people, as a result of
longstanding inequality, have one of the lowest rates of
education and highest rates of unemployment, as social
networking sites continue to become ubiquitous in our daily
lives, so too does the cost of exclusion from these contexts
(Ellis and Kent, 2011), whether that exclusion is based on
social, educational, economic or technological barriers.
Söderström and Ytterhus (2010) note, ‘In the ever more
wired and socially networked world of teenagers’, where
the “speed of peers” digital exchanges...[and the] graphic
nature of on-line interfaces and games’ (p. 313) pose
multiple challenges to access, the lack of access to these
spaces create new forms of social isolation for youth with
disabilities.
Despite these and other aspects of inaccessibility, the per-
sistent and ‘stubborn belief that technologies are liberating
for their projected user’ (Goggin and Newell, 2003, p. 41) is
a very difficult idea to dislodge. In fact, so complete is
the perceived power of technology that coverage of dis-
abled athletes, for instance, often leads to questions about
whether technologies create an unfair advantage to disabled
athletes. These stories often pivot on the uneasy notion that
technology will not simply ameliorate impairment but that
the techno-body, if unrestrained, might actually surpass
human capacity. In a New York Times article focusing on
whether South African runner Oscar Pistorius4should be
allowed to compete in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the
reporter asks:
‘Do prosthetic legs simply level the playing field for
Pistorius, compensating for his disability, or do they
give him an inequitable edge via what some call
techno-doping?...“Withallduerespect, we cannot
accept something that provides advantages,” said Elio
Locatelli of Italy, the director of development for the
I.A.A.F., urging Pistorius to concentrate on the
Paralympics that will follow the Olympics in Beijing.
“It affects the purity of sport. Next will be another
device where people can fly with something on their
back.” ’ (Longman, 2007)
Another article (Clarey, 2011) suggests that officials voiced
a concern that his prosthetics will pose a danger to himself
or to other runners. Thus, although technology can be seen
as eliminating barriers to this athlete’s full participation at
the highest level of his sport, the idea that he is somehow
too good or too dangerous to compete with his non-disabled
peers leads the Italian official to conclude that he actually
belongs in the Paralympics, not the Olympics. Moreover,
disability is characterised as contaminating the ‘purity’
of sport by an Italian official – particularly disheartening
coming from a country known for its commitment to inclu-
sive education. Here, social barriers ensure exclusion even
after physical barriers are transcended.
Technology as a cultural practice
By examining technology as a cultural practice, we high-
light ways that it privileges particular ways of being, which
are grounded in normative, social, cultural and economic
practices, and, further reified in the design, manufacture,
marketing and implementation of technology. Many of
the questions we raise are not so much technological but
3http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnylM1hI2jc.
4Pistorius is a South African runner and a double amputee who sought to qualify for
the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs, 12 192–200
194 © 2012 The Authors. Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs © 2012 NASEN
political (Goggin and Newell, 2003). Thus, while it would
be disingenuous to claim that there is no libratory potential
in technological advancements, we cannot ignore ways that
technology can and often does replicate many of the same
social exclusions and normative thinking operating in the
rest of society. As Ellis and Kent (2011) argue, we must
address the ‘trend in digital design where socially con-
structed features from the analog world are migrated to the
digital environment’ (p. 39).
An example of this tendency to migrate socially constructed
features from the analog to the digital can be seen in a
controversy and lawsuit surrounding the Amazon Kindle
in the USA (Blumenstein, 2010). A lawsuit filed by the
National Federation of the Blind (NFB) and the American
Council of the Blind (ACB) against four American univer-
sities considered whether adopting the Kindle e-reader as a
means of distributing electronic textbooks to its students
was discriminatory. In this case, both technical design of the
Kindle device (including assumptions about its use) and
understandings of providing access for university students
with disabilities were at stake.
As a technology, the Kindle was touted to feature text-to-
speech or spoken text technology that could read textbooks
aloud. This feature of the Kindle would potentially provide
important access to both blind users, as well as to individu-
als with other print and learning disabilities. Yet, the actual
user interface of the Kindle (i.e., its menus) was inacces-
sible to blind users. This lack of basic functionality made
it impossible for blind users to purchase books from the
Kindle store, to select a book to read or even to turn on the
text-to-speech feature. In this case, as in many, technology
was not the issue. Spoken text is a proven and widely used
technology. The political, ideological and social under-
standings of technology use that shaped the Kindle’s design
were the very cause of its inaccessibility. Although spoken
text was built in to the Kindle, it was never designed with
users with disabilities in mind. Instead, the inclusion of this
functionality was presumably included to provide a talking
interface for mobile users (e.g., while driving). Because of
this, spoken text was not implemented to support the spoken
interface familiar to many assistive technology users. The
inclusion of text-to-speech also fell into a grey area regard-
ing copyright – publishers felt that text-to-speech repre-
sented a different form of presentation for which they could
not control pricing or distribution. As a result, publishers
were given control over whether a text could be accessed
via text-to-speech or not.
The decision to use the Kindle on a university campus as a
way to distribute textbooks represents an approach to tech-
nology use that continues to assume that technology use for
students with disabilities will be addressed exclusively
through accommodations and alternate formats. In response
to the lawsuit, Stephen Kuusisto (2009) noted on his blog:
‘American higher education still imagines that the
Victorian approach to disability is acceptable–that the
disabled are taken care of by people who will read to
them in the dark or laboriously turn their books into
tape recordings or Braille....Weknow for instance
that college administrators who imagine that
accessibility is merely an inconvenience and that they
can pass along the issue to others are ignoring the
ADA and many state laws. But they do so with the
built in assurance that the rehab model is acceptable.
Someone else will retrofit inaccessible learning
environments or physical facilities and assure
accessibility for the blind or the wheelchair users or
the deaf or what have you. Those “rehab people”
will take care of that.’ (Kuusisto, para. 3)
Part of this work involves examining how individuals with
disabilities are constructed and reproduced based on taken-
for-granted assumptions about ability and disability. For
instance, as stated earlier, the belief that technology affords
greater independence and an ability to transcend the body,
run counter to disability studies scholars, and activists who
have insisted that interdependence and different ways of
being in the world should be perceived as equally valid.
Assistive technology also places a higher value on techno-
logical, rather than human supports (Sheldon, 2004), which
may or may not reflect the desires or preferences of the
user. The push for technological answers to inaccessibility
also represents a shift from the responsibility of society to
remove barriers to full participation in society, to requiring
individuals with disabilities to submit to a technological
‘fix’ (Sheldon, 2004, p. 156). As stated earlier, assistive
technology could be thought of as promoting a form of what
McRuer (2006) calls ‘compulsory ablebodieness’, wherein
individuals are compelled to rely on technology to approxi-
mate able body norms rather than push the boundaries of
what is considered normal. This kind of thinking also
ensures that there is technology that is designed for disabled
people and technology designed for presumed non-disabled
people; and more importantly, that the latter need not be
accessible because of the former.
Beyond inaccessible websites, media and electronic
forums, technology can also result in unexpected and often
subtle forms of exclusion. Less visible, for instance, are the
ways technology can isolate people, creating unique forms
of social exclusion. Exclusion can result from schools or
universities (or even employers) sidestepping the need for
brick and mortar accessibility by increasingly relying on
technological fixes to make up for physical inaccessibility.
When a student is encouraged (or required) to take an
online course rather than a course on campus, that students
risks being further isolated from social opportunities avail-
able to students who take courses on campus. Exclusion
can also manifest in ways that accessibility is approached
as a retrofit or add on to accessibility rather than being
an integral part of the roll out (Ellis and Kent, 2011).
Besides being more costly, this model means that accessible
options are always one step behind whatever technology
is being developed for mainstream markets. For example,
video games played on consoles like the Wii or XBOX
require specialised modifications to be made accessible –
always after the fact. Moreover, ‘by accepting systemic
Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs, 12 192–200
195© 2012 The Authors. Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs © 2012 NASEN
inaccessibility, people with disabilities are manipulated into
reaffirming...“normality” ’ (Ellis and Kent, 2011, p. 15).
In other words, technology is for what Garland-Thomson
(1996) calls, normates, and only through additional efforts
can technology be made accessible to disabled people.
We would argue that social inclusion must be a key consid-
eration when technology is developed. There are many
examples of accessibility efforts that fail to consider social
inclusion. For instance, a colleague shared a story about a
student group at her public university that organised a
protest when the wheelchair accessible section of a new
hockey stadium was placed far from the student section,
meaning that disabled students were denied access to their
peers and the raucous celebration that typically ensues
in that section during games. Similarly, ‘handicapped’ sec-
tions of theatres or stadiums are often separate and assume
that non-disabled and disabled people will not attend an
event together. Accessible vans that have a policy of only
picking up disabled passengers make it difficult for users to
go on a date with or go to a party with friends who are not
disabled. Again, these oversights are instructive because
they reveal much about the taken-for-granted ways of think-
ing about disabled people as friends, lovers and members of
their communities.
From assistive to accessible technology
Rather than relying on static and outdated definitions of
disability and technology or conflating disability with assis-
tive technology, there is a need to understand disability
and technology more fluidly and responsively. By offering a
vision of accessible technology, as opposed to assistive
technology, our aim is promote thinking about technology
for people rather than for disability. In other words, we
should be talking about technology as a global, accessible
and inclusive concept, not one that requires a qualifier based
on who it is for. This would mean that we would not have
one kind of technology designed only for some of us and
another form of technology that must be redesigned or
reworked to make it accessible for the rest of us.5
Despite the almost universal assumption that technology is
a liberating force for disabled people, technology and elec-
tronic formats are often inaccessible or only partially acces-
sible. Accessibility, by definition, is about ensuring access
to online or digital information by making specific accom-
modations for particular disabilities or, more specifically, to
the types of technologies that individuals with disabilities
would presumably use.6Increasingly, advanced techno-
logy systems are being deployed to facilitate and support
educational experiences. These technologies can be formal
instructional technologies, like Blackboard or other course
management systems (e.g., Moodle). Although higher edu-
cation would represent a continuum in terms of use and
scope of technology, it is rare to find a university or college
course without some technology component.
While these systems are becoming ubiquitous, they have
been developed with little functional understanding of dis-
ability. This results in technology development that does
not work for many people, including disabled people. For
example, in an analysis of a number of predominant online
educational tools, a study by the AFB (Kelly, 2008) found
that almost one third of respondents (N =~100) who
used assistive technology to access online educational tools
reported that the experience was either unreliable or incon-
sistent, if they were able to access or use the tool at all.
Thus, although the lack of access to the Internet has become
all but unthinkable, many disabled people continue to
experience a host of barriers. A recent survey by the Pew
Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project, for
instance, reported that only ‘Fifty-four percent of adults
living with a disability use the Internet, compared with 81%
of adults’ who do not identify as disabled (Fox, 2011, p. 3).
This held true even when demographic variables (such as
age, education level and income) were controlled.
Yet, many of the so-called accommodations that make the
web more accessible for disabled users enhance its use for
all users. For example, keyboard navigability increases the
speed of input for any user. Captioning of content provides
access in noisy environments (or places where quiet is
enforced). Captioned content is also beneficial for people
trying to learn a language, those who are visual learners or
those who learn best when presented content through more
than one mode of delivery. And, text transcripts from cap-
tioning can be indexed and archived, facilitating accurate
and comprehensive archiving of information.
It is also true that accessibility features that are designed for
one group of users can inadvertently cause problems for
another group of users. A classic example is curb cuts,
which are helpful for wheelchair users (as well as people
using strollers or wheeled suitcases) but can create chal-
lenges for blind people who rely on curbs to help navigate.
Similarly, access features for individuals who use screen
readers that are heavily text based can pose difficulties for
users with intellectual and print-based learning disabilities.
Thus, a significant problem with Universal Design (UD) is
that it suggests the possibility of universal access, even
when products that have gone through a UD design process
might not be universally accessible in practice. Moreover,
the UD process rarely requires that designers engage or
involve disabled people in the design process itself.
There are many concrete ways in which technology deter-
mines our interaction with it. Limitations within technology
are often a reflection of the values of those who design,
implement and maintain technology applications. For
5Our ideas here are analogous to the concept of inclusive classrooms, which are
meant to be welcoming of all learners, regardless of ability or disability. Ideally, all
classrooms would be inclusive classrooms – eliminating the need for a qualifier to
designate which classrooms are and are not inclusive. Similarly, we are using the
term, accessible technology but are actually arguing for all technology to be inclusive
and accessible – at which point there would be no need for the qualifier, accessible.
6Again, what kinds of technology are coded as being for disabled people versus
those that are seen as being for everyone else reflects normative and ableist
assumptions.
Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs, 12 192–200
196 © 2012 The Authors. Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs © 2012 NASEN
example, the decision to utilise CAPTCHA,7a visual veri-
fication tool used to keep spam out of sites that provide
online services, makes it very difficult with someone with a
visual disability (or a reading disability even) to join sites,
such as Facebook, without assistance. CAPTCHA requires
users to retype blurred and distorted characters to ensure an
actual human is accessing the site (Figure 1).
However, this seemingly innocuous tool for ‘telling humans
and computers apart therefore rests on a very narrow defi-
nition of humanness’, which presents a ‘significant hurdle’
for blind or visually impaired users who use screen readers
or Lynx, which cannot decipher these characters (Ellis and
Kent, 2011, p. 48).
Assistive technology routinely operates from a deficit-
based, medical model orientation, resulting in an ‘apartheid
of “special needs” ’ (Goggin and Newell, 2003, p. 136). In
addition to dividing technology into assistive and presum-
ably ‘regular’ or ‘generic’ technology, these divisions are
ingrained in much deeper ways. Recreating an Internet
search by Goggin and Newell (2003), for instance, is
instructive in this regard. A recent Google search for the
term ‘blind’, resulted in a Wikipedia entry and a website for
a skateboard brand, followed by links to a local service
provider for the blind, a New York state commission on
blindness and two major associations for the blind. As a
comparison, a similar search for terms like ‘gay, lesbian,
and transgender’ or ‘Latino or Latina’ resulted in very dif-
ferent ‘hits’. Here, after the ubiquitous Wikipedia link, were
links to local community groups, activist and political sites,
etc. The point here is that disability is still very much tied
to charity and medical model discourses, even within elec-
tronic spaces. Websites focusing on managing, treating,
rehabilitating, remediating or preventing disability pre-
dominate despite a burgeoning awareness of disability
culture and disability studies scholarship.
Thinking about disability within the context of technology
provides a useful lens for understanding issues of identity
and exclusion because, as Roulstone (1998) notes, ‘the way
that new technology is experienced cannot be understood
in a social and theoretical vacuum’ (p. 7). As a result of
medical model thinking, technology often carries very dif-
ferent social meanings depending on the assumed user of
the technology. The social meanings associated with par-
ticular types of technology can play a large role in deter-
mining how readily technology will be taken up by users
and may ultimately explain why many assistive technolo-
gies are rejected by youth with disabilities (Söderström
and Ytterhus, 2010). For instance, technology used by
non-disabled people is often associated with competence,
belonging, freedom and independence. Conversely, assis-
tive or disability-focused technologies are more likely to
be associated with restriction, difference and dependency
(Söderström and Ytterhus, 2010). Disability is often per-
ceived as something that must be discretely identified and
accommodated rather than embraced. Moreover, it is
assumed that an assistive technology user is seeking assimi-
lation or the approximation of normalcy.
Unfortunately, by the time an accessible version is devel-
oped, mainstream technology has often been updated
or otherwise changed. In other words, ‘Assistive techno-
logy will always assist something that already exists’
(Söderström and Ytterhus, 2010, p. 313). Despite the fact
that technology rarely stands still for long, it is also true that
a lot of technology starts off more accessible than later
iterations. Internet Explorer, for example, had fewer acces-
sibility features than earlier versions (Ellis and Kent, 2011).
Obviously, ensuring that all technology (new as well any
update) is made as accessible as possible from the start
would eliminate the lag time between the two.
The retrofit model also results in outdated and inadequate
technology solutions. In a typical product development
environment, retrofitting materials and developing addi-
tional functionality after the fact is costly and usually inef-
fective. Moreover, depending on the materials being used,
the cost of retrofitting can be prohibitive, leaving the user
with few options. In addition to the issue of cost, the delay
in accessible or appropriate course material, for instance,
often disadvantages disabled students and risks subjecting
them to stigma (Foley, 2007).
As stated, technology is often seen as an alternative to
bricks and mortar accessibility. Distance learning, for
example, offers an alternative to place-specific classes.
Internet technologies provide access to a wide range of
assistive technologies. Online courses are also appealing to
educational institutions as sources of revenue, and faculty
are increasingly encouraged to develop online courses.
Because online learning environments are typically not
created with the intention of serving disabled students
(or faculty), any need to accommodate a disabled person
is unexpected, resulting in an additional expense. A deaf
student, for example, who normally takes courses on
campus but decides to take a course that uses video deli-
vered over the web, presents a financial challenge when
pre-produced video must be captioned. Thus, it remains to
7Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart
(http://www.captcha.net/).
Figure 1: CAPTCHA verification on the Facebook
registration page
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197© 2012 The Authors. Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs © 2012 NASEN
be seen whether students with disabilities will be pushed
into electronic learning or whether electronic learning con-
texts will result in greater access or new forms exclusion.
As stated, because of the very different social meanings
associated with technology that is considered ‘assistive’,
many youth end up rejecting technologies that carry this
stigma. Compared to other types of technologies, assistive
technology carries very different symbolic meanings as
well as social costs (Söderström and Ytterhus, 2010). Thus,
technologies often take on inherently contradictory sets of
associations depending on whether technology is coded as
‘assistive’or not. Technologies designed for use by disabled
people often look like they were designed for children
or carry other markers that signify disability in some way.
While mass-market technologies have consistently become
more ‘stylish’, assistive technologies frequently do not have
what we might call the ‘cool factor’. As identity markers, the
symbolic values and identities associated with various types
of technologies play a huge role in determining how readily
individuals embrace them. The rate of assistive technology
abandonment or discontinued use of assistive technology
is reported as high as 30% in adults (Scherer, 2004). There
is no comprehensive literature on assistive technology
abandonment rates by children or youth with disabilities;
however, anecdotal evidence suggests a high abandonment
rate among these users compared to ‘typical’ users.
In comparison to technologies coded as ‘assistive’, the
iPhone/iPod Touch has become a fashion accessory and the
iPad is not far behind. Despite their versatility, these tech-
nologies are not marked by what we’d call the ‘Speak &
Spell effect’ Speak&Spell™. In other words, they don’t
look like they were designed for a child or a person with
special needs (Figure 2).
This example illustrates that assistive technology is not
designed in the same way that mass-market technology
is designed. Whereas, mass-market technologies are typi-
cally designed for broad (non-disabled) audiences, assistive
technology is designed around assumptions about disabili-
ties and disabled users that may or may not be accurate. For
example, a dedicated augmentative or assistive communi-
cation (AAC) device, which costs over $6000, is ‘tough-
ened’ ostensibly to withstand the rough use of a disabled
person. An iPad costing about $600 (plus $200–$300 in
specialised apps) can provide the same functionality
(Figure 2). Moreover, the iPad can also be placed in a pro-
tective case that offers almost as much ‘protection’ as the
specialised device. Yet, by investing six or seven thousand
dollars in a dedicated device, assistive technology users are
‘committing’ to technology that has been designed with
very particular ideas about who disabled users are and what
they need or want in a device.
A technology’s success and popularity is often related to its
transparency. Thus, although an iPhone may be considered
a fashion accessory, its user interface would still be consid-
ered ‘transparent’. Using an iPhone requires little effort (to
learn and use), which follows a famous technology design
maxim that insists that ‘tools should be noticed only when
they break’ (Norman, 1998, p. 243). Mass-market technolo-
gies are also typically designed to be ‘disposable’. Because
the rate of technological change is so rapid, today’s tech-
nology is expected to be obsolete in a fraction of the time
that it did a few years ago. Futurist and inventor Ray Kurz-
weil notes that a person in Kenya with a mobile phone has
more access to information than the president of the United
States did a decade ago. Kurzweil recalls working with a
computer at MIT in the 1960s that was the size of a whole
room. Today, the technology in mobile phones is 100 times
smaller and 100 times more powerful than the huge com-
puters from the 1960s (Ptolemy, 2009).A somewhat cynical
reason given for the disposability of technology is that
technology is big business: If technology does not become
obsolete, then people will not replace it.
Eyeglasses are a good example of how a technology
designed to ameliorate a problem can also become
fashionable. Furthermore, conceptualisations of disability
are rarely static. What is considered a disability changes in
different social and historical contexts (e.g., Foucault and
Gordon 1980). Pullin (2009) notes that the fact that mild
visual impairment is not considered to be a disability,
whereas mild hearing loss is, is a sign of the success of
eyeglasses. Despite their current status as fashion accesso-
ries, glasses were classified as medical appliances in Britain
in the 1930s and specifically designed not to be stylish.
The ways in which technology is being developed and dis-
seminated are changing. Contemporary technologies often
are both functional and aesthetic–fashion accessories. Both
the pace of change and the tendency to focus on trends to
meet niche markets results in technology being perceived as
‘immune’ from a broader ideology. Reflective of other types
of binary thinking about difference, ability and disability
are also perceived as static and mutually exclusive con-
structs. However, as Sheldon (2004) notes, ‘Technology is
not neutral. It is created by the same oppressive society that
turns those with impairments into disabled people...It is
no surprise, then, that disabled people have a complicated
relationship with technology’ (p. 155).
Accessibility, in terms of technology, too often follows a
reactive (Söderström and Ytterhus, 2010) or retrofit model,
Figure 2: Price and design of assistive and mass-market
technologies
Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs, 12 192–200
198 © 2012 The Authors. Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs © 2012 NASEN
rather than building in access from the beginning, a stated
goal of approaches like Universal Design. Given the rapid
changes in development and implementation, technology
often outpaces accessibility standards, leaving accessibility
issues to be addressed as they arise. Likewise, there is a
tendency to promote disability-specific solutions, creating a
two-tier system (Sheldon, 2004) that replicates the ways
educational systems are divided into general and special
education.
Precedent for a more accessible and inclusive conceptuali-
sation of technology can already be seen in aspects of the
technology market. Assistive technology can be designed
to look as ‘cool’ as any other technology. Additionally,
technology designed for disability does not have to be
segregated to any particular market. In fact, there are many
examples of the crossover appeal of technologies for dis-
abled users,8making it difficult to draw a hard and fast line
between what is and is not considered assistive technology.
Pullin (2009) argues that disability can inform design and
celebrate disability, rather than try to mask it or package
it into preconceived notions of dis/ability. Skrtic (1991),
too, insists that disability should be seen as offering a useful
aspect of complexity that, if embraced, would lead to
innovation.
Conclusion
Rather than designing technology around impairment or
relying on a retrofit model, we argue that people’s relation-
ship to technology must be understood in a larger social,
historical and cultural context. Moving beyond merely
accommodating disabled people, accessible and inclusive
technology would encompass a range of social and techni-
cal approaches to technology. In this conclusion we lay out
some of these practices.
First, similar to universal design, accessible and inclusive
technology would build in accessibility from the start rather
than try to retrofit after the fact or make accommodations.
Taking universal design one step further, by including dis-
abled people in all aspects of the design, development,
implementation and marketing of technologies, the aim
would be to develop technology that is both accessible and
responsive. Accessible technologies would not be seen as a
replacement for, but rather a way to augment brick and
mortar accessibility, thereby creating multiple points of
access for all users. This approach would consider the needs
of those with cognitive, sensory and physical disabilities as
important sources of diversity and complexity necessary to
inform the design of technology to increase accessibility
and usability for all users.
Second, accessible and inclusive technology would offer
the opportunity to ‘re-crip’ technology by honouring and
valuing interdependence and different, disability-specific
ways of being in the world. Thus, even in designing specia-
lised technology, an accessible and inclusive approach
would aim to enhance the ‘cool’ factor. Accessible techno-
logy would also be grounded in the understanding that
technology cannot be isolated from the social context, and
the knowledge that if technology is to reduce social isola-
tion, it must be designed with social inclusion in mind.
The time is right for technology to be re-imagined without
qualifiers (i.e., assistive, inclusive or accessible). A report
by the US Census Bureau reported about 18% of the US
population as having some form of disability in 2002 (U.S.
Census Bureau, 2006). While this figure represents a
significant portion of the population, it does not take into
account the fluid nature of disability (i.e., temporary or
episodic disabilities). For example someone with a broken
wrist may have difficulty using a mouse but still needs to be
able to use technology to meet the day-to-day requirements
of their job. Similarly, as we age, most of us will experience
disability of some kind (around 72% US population over 80
years old has a disability). Thus, accessible and inclusive
technology is about more than just ‘opening doors’, it is
also about keeping them open. We must consider that dis-
abled people will always be users of any and all techno-
logies, and that it is the responsibility of designers and
technology makers to consider access and not assume
access will be retrofitted later.
The growth of the Internet, and the explosion of small and
powerful devices like tablets and smart phones, has changed
the ways people communicate, teach, work and learn, while
at the same time increasing the isolation of those who do not
have access to information technologies, Access is becom-
ing a higher-stake issue – we cannot wait for an accessible
patch or Band-Aid.
Address for correspondence
Alan Foley,
332 Huntington Hall,
Syracuse University,
Syracuse,
NY 13244,
USA.
Email: afoley@syr.edu.
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