ABSTRACT
It was clear from this preliminary study that people with disabilities may attach great importance to some of the technologies they use. The participants identified and strongly affirmed a number of attributes offered by technology – communication with others, mobility, physical safety, personal autonomy, control, independence, competence, confidence, the ability to better engage in social relationships, the workforce and participation in wider community. These attributes are key components of their sense of self and wellbeing. [. . .]
Technologies were conceptualised in two dominant ways by our participants: as tools assisting bodily function and as contributing to the body/self as it is experienced and presented to others. Some technologies allowed the participants to present themselves in ways which fitted with dominant values associated with functioning, capable individuals who need little help from others. The opportunity to construct and present this ideal self, contra to the meanings of passivity and helplessness that are commonly associated with disability, is clearly a choice that was of great importance to the people we interviewed. Such technologies, therefore, were incorporated unproblematically into their notions of self and body. In contrast, those technologies that served to underline the participants’ status as ‘disabled’, to single them out as ‘deviant bodies’, tended to be greeted with greater ambivalence by the interviewees. Some people rejected these technologies outright, seeing them as barriers to presenting their preferred self even though they may have enhanced bodily capacities. These technologies were not incorporated, but rather were conceptually positioned as ‘other’ to oneself.[. . .]
