ABSTRACT
Disability advocates around the world have fought some important battles in recent decades. As a result, disabled people’s rights have advanced considerably on a global scale, becoming enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) since 2006. Both the United States and the United Kingdom led the way in the development of disabled people’s rights, pioneering the introduction of anti-discrimination legislation in 1990 and 1995, respectively. More broadly, these changes have occurred alongside a fundamental shift in debates on disability and society, which increasingly espouse the rhetoric and key principles of the independent living movement in the U.S., and the fundamental tenets of the social model of disability in the U.K. (Barnes 2007). However, more than 20 years after the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the U.K.’s Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), progress towards disabled people’s full social, political and economic inclusion remains incomplete in these advanced countries. In particular, civic engagement and political participation continue to prove elusive for disabled citizens, who consequently have fewer opportunities than others to influence policy decisions likely to fundamentally affect their lives. In order to understandwhat lies at the root of disabled people’s exclusion
from politics and policy-making, this chapter turns to both citizenship and disability scholarship. As disability scholars (Beckett 2005) and feminist writers (Lister 2007a, p. 49) noted, existing studies on democratic citizenship largely overlook disability, either because of its complex nature or due to aperceived lackof relevance tobroader citizenship issues. Toaddress this gap, it is useful to review the debates that underpinned the development of disability rights and relevant policy initiatives in the U.K. and the U.S. in recent decades. Empirical work is reviewed here that shows how so far disability policy has fallen short of promoting the development of full political rights for disabled people. The tendency for debates on disability policy to overlook instances of institutional discrimination within the formal and informal settings in which democratic politics is discussed has contributed in fundamental ways to the persisting entrapment of disabled
people in a position of marginal citizenship on both sides of the Atlantic. As is discussed in detail below, formal participation channels such as elections and political parties remain off-limits to most disabled people. Disability rights activism has remedied this democratic gap in part. Yet, following the introduction of landmark legislation in the 1990s and until recently, thesemovements seemed to have lostmuchof their original thrust, while progress towards full citizenship for disabled people slowed down considerably. In particular, observers pointed out that U.K. disability groups switched their attention to a mere ‘defensive engagement’ of acquired rights, instead of fighting for their expansion (Beckett 2005, pp. 405-6). In addition, veteran disability scholars continue to this day to be outspoken critics of charitable organisations run by advocacy ‘professionals’without disabled people in leadership positions,which in the last decade ‘have experienced a resurgence, while the power and influence of the disabled people’s movement has undoubtedly declined’ (Oliver & Barnes 2012, p. 169). Having traced the contours of the exclusion of disabled people from the
civic arena, the second part of this chapter asks whether new media technologies could support the creation of a type of politics better suited to the needs of disabled citizens. In particular, the idea that online media could provide disabled Internet users with viable channels to meet, discuss and self-organise outside established advocacy groups is explored. ‘Informal’ opportunities to participate in politics online, it is argued, could help disabled people circumvent the institutionalised discrimination that plagues traditional channels of democratic participation and promote a more inclusive form of citizenship. With this in mind, this chapter reviews the existing literature ondisability andnewmedia,which,while still a niche field, has expanded considerably in recent years. A critical look at this literature reveals the dangers of approaching the relationship between disability and the Internet exclusively through the access and accessibility lens. Restricting scholarly investigation to the perspective of those among disabled peoplewho cannot benefit fromonlinemedia, or only benefit from it in limited measure compared to others, is bound to generate partial and potentially misleading conclusions. Instead, there is a need for a broader and more balanced approach to the issue of disability and new media technologies. This should overcome the dualismderived fromdigital divide theories and account for the experiences of the growing majority of disabled Britons and Americans who regularly use the Internet in spite of persisting access and accessibility difficulties.
