2004 Summer Institute : Final Report

Monday, June 14, 2004

Alan Roulstone was the first to apply a social model of disability to technology. Before his book-length study, Enabling Technology: Disabled People, Work and New Technology, Roulstone explained that research to do with new technologies and disability was informed by a rehabilitation, or medical, model of disability: "The previous way that writers have applied thinking, as I'm going to argue, was very much on a rehabilitation, medically-focused, and dare I say medically dominated approach, which tended to talk about fixing the person." These models view disability as a problem with the individual, and technology as a way of "fixing" the problem body. The social barriers model, on the other hand, identifies social organization as the source of disability. That is, the social model views the notion of disability as arising from societal attitudes rather than as a problem in the individual. According to the social model, individuals are not disabled; rather, we live in a disabling society.

Roulstone began his address by commenting on the way in which new information and communication technologies have the potential to redefine social organization, distance, time, and space: "We have now social possibilities that were unknown even twenty, thirty years ago." For example, new technologies can fundamentally change the perception and reality of who can work and study. A person with a disability who may have been deemed "uneducable" or "unemployable" thirty years ago might now, with the appropriate information and communications technology, no longer fit into those categories. The virtual reality of the internet also creates a new social organization. When identity is created and constructed online, there exists the potential for disability to become a non-issue in the virtual world.

Roulstone cautioned that the rapid speed with which technology changes can also be disabling if technologies are not shaped or informed by people with disabilities: "We need to reflect on how technology can create more barriers if we don't shape it, if we don't radicalize it, if we don't politicize it." In other words, people with disabilities must be involved in the design of new technology, as well as at the level of policy making related to technology. He also emphasized the importance of the role of government regulations in terms of ensuring that the development of new technologies is enabling for people with disabilities.

"With industrialization an important but unplanned consequence-I'll say that again-the important but unplanned consequence, the opposite of serendipity, anti-serendipity-the important but unplanned consequence in industrialization was that people whose bodies were not standard bodies, people whose height wasn't average, or whose physical strength was not average, were designed out of the economic nature of society. Now, [Vic] Finkelstein makes that point. It may be slightly overstated, but it is fundamental and is easily overlooked. It wasn't planned. Some of my students, my more lively students, when they're writing, will say things like…'capitalists in the 19th century deliberately designed disabled people out of the factory system.' No they didn't. That wasn't the objective. But the end result clearly was the same, for those people whose bodies were not average and who had an impairment. …In the UK, which was the birth of industry-I'm not bragging about that, there's lots of problems with it. But as the workshop of the world, we created a better population in the 19th century. …And that presented us with the very language of disability following a hundred years. So it's easy to forget what's gone on there. If we turn that process around, what we've seen in the last thirty years has been the opposite process. Again, an unplanned but at times very positive consequence. Again, unplanned, but positive. If you sat down and wrote something like, or thought: 'industry has sat down and deliberately designed mainstream technologies for disabled people.' That's not true either, is it?"

Roulstone also compared and contrasted the development of new technologies during the twentieth century to the development of technologies during industrialization. He identified the following two significant differences:

1. Information is at the center of new technologies in the twentieth century, as opposed to the technologies of industrialization, which were concerned more with raw materials rather than information.
2. The development of new technologies during industrialization systematically but unintentionally excluded people with disabilities, because the emphasis was on physical capacity and the notion of the average worker: "With industrialization an important but unplanned consequence was that people whose bodies were not standard bodies, were not average, were designed out of the economic nature of society." The development of new technologies in the twentieth century, by contrast, has unintentionally been beneficial to people with disabilities by being, for the most part, an enabling factor.

• Alan Roulstone's paper
• Alan Roulstone's bibliography

The following important points arose in the discussion following Alan Roulstone's talk:

• There is an assumption that new technologies are inevitably progressive and enabling, and that progress is good. However, there is the potential for new technologies to create more barriers if people with disabilities do not shape the way in which technology is developed.
• Many people with disabilities experience feelings of ambivalence towards new technology.
• The role of the government is crucial in terms of ensuring that the development of new technologies is enabling for people with disabilities.
• People with disabilities must be involved at the level of design of new technology, as well as at the level of policy making.
• The challenge of information overload is often overlooked.
• Most mainstream technology is brought about by the needs of industry, not consumers with disabilities.
• The medical model of disability focuses on the cure/care "solution" of disability at the level of the individual. The social model, however, focuses on policy as the site of solution to disability, and building in access from the start.

Key debate: Was the exclusion of people with disabilities during industrialization intentional or unintentional?

Key questions: Is the systematic discrimination against people with disabilities also occurring in the development of new technologies? Can a social model of disability address structural issues that affect the systematic exclusion of people with disabilities?