Making video mundane: intellectual disability and the use of camcorders

Abstract

Models of disability assume that impairments have only a limiting effect on technology usage. Drawing upon the results of a year-long participant observation study of the use of camcorders by six severely intellectually disabled adults, we argue that intellectual disability (ID) affects the domestication of technology in a more complex and interwoven fashion. The observed group of ID adults attended a weekly 2-h session, organised by a local day centre, in which they would make videos at local locations. There were two main aspects of appropriation in this context. One is the role of the support worker (SW) in mediating many of their interactions due to accessibility problems with the camcorder. While these interventions by the SW allowed them to use the camcorder, they also slowed their interactions with it making them less direct. SW also guided and constrained their early encounters with the camcorders, strongly influencing the environment of appropriation. The second aspect is the way the group transformed the camcorder into two tools during the course of the study: an `artistic' tool for visual exploration, and a `social' tool that participated in the group's social activities. These appropriations are very different to anything reported in the literature on mainstream camcorder use. While technologists typically model disability as a set of functional limitations, we would argue for broader models that consider the wider social and support aspects of ID, recognising the different ways in which they may choose to make a technology mundane for them.