ABSTRACT
The area of social policy in relation to technology is still an overlooked one—often regarded as a specialist or technical area. This chapter discusses key issues in the development of social programs for people with disabilities that are delivered via mobiles. People with disabilities have been avid users of mobile communications, using them in their everyday lives—in prosaic as well as novel ways. New modes of governance are possible, that draw upon the affordances and cultures of mobile and online technologies, as well as the new understanding of people and their lives that goes along with a human rights approach to disability. New possibilities are unfolding in the new mobile-I nternet hybrid technologies of Twitter, iPhone and smartphone apps, mobile Internet, mapping, location, and sensing technologies. The importance of contesting and indeed transforming such disabling assumptions, lies in the potential that mobiles could then offer to open up new directions for social policy and disability.
