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Enabling/Disabling Cyberspaces

Enabling/Disabling Cyberspaces. What’s the Difference?. “disabled person” “person with a disability”. Defining Disability: Problematic Models. 1. Moral Model: Largely out of favor, but for centuries disabilities were marked as signs of sin (or less often as divine favor)

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Enabling/Disabling Cyberspaces

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  1. Enabling/DisablingCyberspaces

  2. What’s the Difference? • “disabled person” • “person with a disability”

  3. Defining Disability:Problematic Models • 1. Moral Model: Largely out of favor, but for centuries disabilities were marked as signs of sin (or less often as divine favor) • 2. Medical Model: Regards disability as a defect or sickness to be cured through medical intervention • 3. Rehabilitation Model: an offshoot of the medical model that views professional rehabilitation as the “cure”

  4. Defining “Disability”:The Disability Rights Model • Within the Disability Rights Movement “disability is defined as a dominating attitude by [medical & other] professionals, inadequate support services when compared with society generally, as well as attitudinal, architectural, sensory, cognitive & economic barriers, and the strong tendency of for people to generalize about all persons with disabilities overlooking the large variations with the disability community.” --Deborah Kaplan

  5. Social Construction of Disability • Disability is not a natural fact; it is a socially defined state of being • Which is the “normal” way to move over the course of 1 mile: by walking, by jogging, by riding a bicycle, by riding in a car, by wheelchair, by train? • Disability is a continuum, not a condition • All of us will at some point in our lives be disabled, temporarily or with likely permanency, & certainly if we live long enough

  6. Barriers faced by PwDs • John, a quadriplegic, was asked “What is the greatest barrier you face in regard to your disability?” • Answer “People’s attitudes towards me.” • Mary, a woman is legally blind, was asked “What is the greatest barrier you face in regard to your disability?” • Answer: “People’s attitudes towards me.”

  7. Commonly Disabling Attitudes • Pity • Heroic appreciation • Invisibility/avoidance • Annoyance/impatience

  8. “Rights” vs. “Privileges” • As of the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, “access” and related issues to facilitate the integration of Persons with Disabilities into all aspects of life moved from the status of “privileges” to legally binding “rights”

  9. What is a disability? • Disability Rights & Independent Living movements argue that social attitudes & the built environment are major disabling features that are falsely regarded as intrinsic to the disability • Most of you can’t read with your fingers. Is that a disability? • It would be if the only books published were in Braille. >

  10. What Would It Mean to Shift to a Disability Rights Model? • So-called “disabilities” would be seen as naturally occurring & accidental differences in degrees of able-bodiedness that can change over time • Various “disabilities” would be seen as socially imposed limitations on movement & access created by cultural expectations & built into environments • The larger disability is the failed ability of society to create accommodations to varying degrees of able-bodiedness >

  11. The Invisibility of Privilege • Privilege is almost always invisible to, or taken for granted by, the privileged (white priv., heterosexual priv., & able-bodied priv.) • Try going through a day without a particular enabling modality: sight, hearing, walking etc. • At least try it “virtually” as a thought experiment >

  12. Enabling Online Activity • 60% of websites remain inaccessible to people with physical disabilities in 2009 (up from 90% inaccessible in 2001) • People with disabilities who do have access on average spend twice as much time online as able-bodied users >

  13. Lack of online access is a human rights issue • In light of the Americans with Disabilities Act (1990) which established “access” as right, not a privilege of luxury for persons with disabilities, access to cyberspaces should therefore also be a right, but a right still routinely and massively violated • Hardware issues, software issues, application issues • Access comes & goes: new apps or programs or features can disable earlier ones • Job discrimination issues for people with disabilities • World Wide Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI 1997) and World Wide Web Consortium work remains an unrealized ideal >

  14. An Enabled World: At What Cost? Doesn’t “accommodation” of disabilities cost too much? • What should we pay for basic human rights? • What are the costs if the access expectation is built in as opposed to an after thought? • What are the societal costs of not accommodating the many gifted people with disabilities? >>>

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