Sensing technologies, digital inclusion, and disability diversity

Abstract

AbstractThis article focuses on uses and experiences of everyday sensory technologies by racially and ethnically diverse persons with disabilites, bringing our research to the junction of critical technology studies, migration studies, and critical disability studies. We draw on a large-scale qualitative project that involves new and second-generation migrants with disabilities from a socio-economically disadvantaged area in Sydney, Australia. Findings show the negotiated exchanges of inclusion and exclusion that disabled people from diverse racial and ethnic minority backgrounds encounter with sensory and other technologies. While such technologies have rightfully been criticized for their roles in the surveillance, regulation, exclusion, and financialization of disability and ethnically diverse groups, these negotiations show how processes of agency, awareness, and peer support produce and in turn benefit from encounters with technology in complex ways. We argue the continued emergence of automation warrants both critique and cautious ongoing experimentation.