2004 Summer Institute : Final Report

Enabling Technology for Disabled People:
Exploring the Potential and Barriers to Enabling Futures.

This address takes as its starting point the significant potential of new information and communication technologies in opening up and redefining social and cultural notions of space. By 1998 Francis Cairncross referred to the 'death of distance' afforded by the Network Society (1998). These redefinitions of space, time and social dynamics, if realised present substantial enabling possibilities for disabled people and social inclusion in Europe (European Communities, 2003; Hawkridge and Vincent, 1985; Lobato, 1998; Roulstone 1998; Treffers, 1998). It is also important however to emphasize both the potential of rapid technological change for excluding disabled people where the value of new technologies are not fully realised and exploited on behalf of disabled people (Roulstone, 2000). This more socially exclusive use of new digital technologies presents a very real risk of disabled people forming a significant part of an electronic underclass in the 21st century. It is vitally important that the policy, legislative, business and governmental agenda (Goggin ad Newell, 2003) remain central to any wider evaluation of the role and function of ICTs for disabled people. The social inclusion of disabled people and the Disabled Peoples' Movement in the form of user involvement is also a prerequisite of a more enabling society (Sapey, 2000; Velasco, 1998)

Context

The 20th century has witnessed the rapid and exponential diffusion of Information and Comunication Technologies (ICTs) to all areas of social life (Kranzberg in Guile 1985; Forester 1989; Scwharz and Leyden 1997). More recent discussion points to the complex interplay between information, ICT diffusion and social change. Indeed the term 'informationalisation' captures a range of views on the relationship between society, technology and information (Castells 1996, 199, 1998; Mueller and Tan 1997; Sapey 2000, Van Zon 2000). In social inclusion terms these changing relations are perhaps most marked in the field of paid work as this remains the principal route to social reward and status in Western society (Rose in Gallie 1989; Riddell in Barton 1996). Alongside these changes are parallel shifts in the educational, spatial and social prerequisites of contemporary society. Employment, education and wider social life are inextricably linked to ICTS and increasingly to the digital revolution in our leisure lives. Sound and visual images are no longer bound (in theory) by the constraints of the immediate world, but become dissolved in a world of diffuse social space which have the potential to change the rules of time, space and locality set in place by the surveillance of the industrial system (Foucault, 1980; Thompson, 1955). The rapid obsolescence of ICT hardware and software generations present both a promise and a threat to disabled people's employment (Floyd and North 1985; Cornes 1987, 1989, 1990, Roulstone 1998a).

Most commentaries on the promise ICTs for disabled people take an historical view of technological change Bowe 1980; Finkelstein 1980; Hawkridge and Vincent 1985; Cornes 1987, 1989; Macfarlane 1990; Perlman and Hanson 1990; Roulstone 1993, 1998a). Here the dramatic shift from heavy industrial work to post-industrial desk-top environements, electronic communication and teleworking (Lyon 1988; Duxbury 1998; European Commission 1998; Gomes and Aouad 1999; Murray and Jenny 1990) is accompanied by the subversion of predominant views of time and space (Giddens 1998). These changes in turn allow fundamental revisions to the way work is undertaken and workplace environments configured. Here, the industrial system saw heavy machinery and productive norms based around notions of the average body size, stamina and strength (Finkelstein 1980; Gleeson 1991; Ryan and Thomas 1987). The shift to largely post industrial working (Kumar 1978) has been reflected in the growth of office work (Labour Force Survey 1998). This shift is accompanied by broader shifts in working conditions (over the period 1850-1980), longer annual leave, career breaks, flexi-time and latterly the notion of 'reasonable adjustments' for disabled workers embodied in the UK 1995 Disability Discrimination Act and the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act.

Coupled with the changing tenor of work is the ubiquitous adoption of desk-top technologies as the technologies of the modern workplace. This is important for disabled people as it signals a return to smaller-scale technologies. Just as pre-industrial production was based on technologies which more closely mapped on to the realities of human corporeal diversity, new desk-top technologies provide microcosmic work spaces which reduce formerly large workspaces to desk-top environments. Here, information, communication and daily working can focus around the hub of ICTs such that physical strength and stamina is less pivotal to workplace survival and thriving (Roulstone 1998a; 1998b Child, Price and Roulstone 2002a). Microchip technology represents a Copernican shift in allowing a fundamental reappraisal of ergonomic assumptions about the body, environments and the workplace. (Edwards 1995; Hawkridge and Vincent 1985; Long 1996). For the first time in 200 years, the concept of employability can be sharply redrawn to allow a review of disabled peoples employment potential to once again encapsulate physical, sensory and intellectual diversity. To understand the promise of ICTs we can draw on the work of Stonier (1983) who rightly noted that the technology of the factory age extended the musculature, new microchip technologies however extend neurological capacity. Here ICTs allow access to data retrieval, storage, manipulation and communication. The plurality and range of working methods made possible by these microcosmic working environments provide clear potential for the further inclusion of disabled people in the contemporary workplace (Floyd and North 1985; Roulstone 1998a, 1998b; Sandhu,1987). Additionally specialist technologies allow people with severe impairments access to formerly exclusive written-word, speech and wider working and living environments (Church and Glennan 1992).

Similar changes are identified within the spheres of education (Weinberg, 1990; Hawkridge and Vincent, 1990) and independent living, where assistive technologies allow a plurality of communication, information and task completion through voice activated, speech output, icon-based software alongside technical improvements in mobility, dexterity and spatial technologies. Third generation digital technology and digital image technology make for more communication choices as well as providing new educational opportunities. The world wide web provides the potential for identity validation through interactive forums such as chat rooms. Sandy Stone's 'The War of Desire and Technology' (1995) notes the internet allows :

… negotiating of realities and the conjunction of social
spaces and activities bound together by webs of
physical and ideological force.

The above conveys the significant potential of ICTs in the redefinition of the nature and accessibility of contemporary society. It would be wrong however to assume that new technology by itself guarantees more inclusive social relations, or indeed that the benefits of new technology have been recognised or acknowledged fully by employers (Beinart 1996, 1997; Glickman 1996; Roulstone 1998) or the state in western society (Goggin and Newell, 2003). Employer attitudes (Graham et al 1990; RNIB, 2002), continued physical barriers (Imrie 1996; Zarb 1995). Indeed the increasingly globalised and disciplined nature of contemporary employment, coupled with the rapid pace of technological change could lead to further social exclusion rather than less for disabled people (Hine 1999; Roulstone 2002b; Waddell 1999). Indeed the potential for disabled workers of smaller-scale employment technologies is significant as its' potential are entirely unplanned as regards mainstream technology and disabled people. Any benefits that have accrued to date have been largely serendipitous. Whilst greater successes have been reported in the field of disabled childrens' education, in large part due to the planned used of assistive technology and the funding fomulae in UK 'special schools' (Firminger, 1995; Hawkridge and Vincent, 1990), these developments have not substantially reduced the barriers to mainstreaming and social inclusion in UK education (Armstrong and Barton, 2000; CSIE, 2001).

Society, Space and New Technology

At the heart of the paradox of the relationship between new technology, environments and disabled people is the fact that the very barriers that new technologies have the potential to reduce or reform, still very much shape the design, use and review of ICTs. Space and spatial redefinition itself continues to be the realm of promise rather than realisation for many disabled people:

• Access to new technology in employment, education ad independent living continue to be limited
• User involvement in the design and review of assistive technologies remain very limited
• Technologies are largely ameliorative rather than liberationary for disabled people
• Attitudes continue to undervalue or devalue disabled people in the 21st Century
• Gaining technologies is often conditional upon pre-existing social power, for example being in employment
• Social deprivation, poverty and disability are still strongly linked in the UK
• Spatial redefinition is only part of the enabling equation, non-disabled people need to be more open to disabled peoples' achievements
• Spatial change and manipulation often fall short of independence (choice) where integration (placement) is more likely than inclusion (acceptance)

New Policies for a New Era

Anti-discrimination legislation in the form of the US ADA 1990 and UK DDA 1995 address disabling environments, with accessibility issues being addressed in the US by the 1996 telecommunications Act, 1973 US Rehabilition Act (S508) etc.

Whilst beginning to address inaccessibility from the design stage onwards as Goggin and Newell (2003) note this has not led to systemic changes affording the guarantee of enabling design, whilst in the United Kingdom, the DDA 1995 has done little to impact on accessible design ab initio, with most emphasis being placed on reasonable adjustments in a much more abstract sense of environmental manipulation. Of note there has been little attempt to identify the role of given technologies and processes in enhancing spatial inclusion. Indeed there is little awareness of the connection between disability, space and inclusion in UK policy terms (Gooding, 1996, 1995, Disability Rights Task Force, 1999).

Additionally the DDA 1995 (as amended) continues to reflect legal and often unhelpful constructions of disability and falls far short of an enabling piece of legislation (Income Data Services, 2001; Roulstone, 2003).

Despite the importing of the Human Rights Act 2001 from the European Convention on Human Rights and despite the many ICT related development projects funded by the EC-TIDE, HORIZON and specific initiatives such as the ISDAC and EDF projects on an inclusive information society, evidence suggests that ICT and inclusion policies have still to catch up with these ideas. Some of these ideas (TIDE) remain locked into a rehabilitation model which views new technology as a 'technical fix' for social problems and underplays the power of the social in negating the benefits of spatial and technological changes. This has in part led to e-inclusion being a part of the eEurope 2005 Action Plan and to Framework 6 as a facilitator of research into an inclusive information and we can add ICT policy (EC Ministerial Statement, Crete 2003). The recent report from the European Foundation for Improving Living and Working Conditions (Cited in European Update, 2003: 19) points to the continued 'physical, legal and administrative barriers' faced across Europe by disabled people. The report notes the pan European rates of disabled peoples' unemployment being on average three times the rate for non-disabled people. When disabled people obtain work, they receive inferior salaries and wages to their non-disabled counterparts. In the United Kingdom the number of disabled people in receipt of out-of-work disability benefit has risen over the period 1997-2002, despite New Labour's active labour market New Deal policies (Labour Market Trends, 2003). The left-leaning Insititute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) has established that there are one million disabled people of working age who would like to work if an appropriate job could be found.

It is very clear from the above that spatial potential and enabling social inclusion an only be meaningful where wider social and technological policies themselves add to more enabling social and institutional environments.

There is an urgent need to place the specific spatial benefits of new technologies, professional practices and psycho-social developments into a wider European social policy context.

As we begin the 21st century and face new social and technical possibilities it is essential that the disabled peoples movement in North America and Europe via the DPI, collaborative research across Europe and outcomes focused polices are integrated into both national and European policy forums. In concrete terms the very notion of 'spatial inclusion' and 'enabling environments' need encouragement in their entry into a critical vocabulary of disability rights as we move through the new century.