Disability Culture and Technology

Many disability communities have developed remote techniques for participating in work and social life. These innovative techniques are part of disability culture and community. Many people believe that technologies merely help disabled people do the things that nondisabled people do.

However, disabled people also design their own technologies in order to challenge what is considered normal. “Disability Culture and Technology” aims to address the social inequalities that disabled people face by documenting the role of technology in disability communities. The data resulting from this study will be made free and available to the public.

Publications resulting from this data will also enable policymakers, employers, and decision-makers to make more informed choices regarding remote participation. This will make employment and education opportunities more equitable and diverse.

Society will also benefit from a better understanding of disabled peoples’ contributions and knowledge.<br/><br/>“Disability Culture and Technology” will ask how disabled people use and transform remote access technologies to shape society, both during and before the COVID-19 pandemic.

This NSF Scholars Award gathers oral histories, images, videos, and other forms of documentation to build an archive of the ways that disabled people use remote access to form community.

This archive will enable researchers to study how disabled people shape technology in order to survive the pandemic, and more broadly, to change society.

It will inform how science and technology studies scholars understand issues such as who designs, uses, and transforms technology.

The research and resulting publications will also inform how disability studies scholars understand the role of technology in connecting disabled people across long distances and forming communities.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.