I recently(ish) read and got a lot from Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement by Ashley Shew. Below are my brief notes.
A big theme of the book is that the (ableist) world often considers disability a problem to which (more, better) technology is the solution. The main way to counter this false idea is to listen, carefully and closely, to the experiences of disabled people.
Ableism and normalcy
The ableist thinking and framing comes from social and structural problems.
- They cast disabled people as fundamentally flawed, broken, or inadequate.
- They create create categories and stereotypes for disabled people.
- Categories of disability are constructed relative to our expectations and ideas of normalcy.
The idea that there’s one normal or healthy or right way to be is a culturally constructed fiction.
- There’s no one right ethnicity, or gender, or culture.
- Disability is inherent in the human condition.
- It’s a normal and predictable part of the human experience.
There’s pressure to conform to the norm, to the average, to become normalised.
- Compliance with norms is usually for the comfort of non-disabled people. It makes life harder for lack of acceptance.
- Impairments — lower functional differences — can exist without them being a problem.
The Social Model of Disability
The historical origin of disability was “anything that kept people from working”. It’s deeply embedded in our society that being fit and vigorous makes you a good person.
The social model says disability is a social construct.
- A mismatch between a person and the environment, which was designed for and by normative bodies and minds.
- It pushes back against the idea that disability is abnormal.
Note that the word is dis-abled, not un-abled. Disability describes a mere-difference, not a bad-difference.
Technoableism
Technoableism says that eliminating disability is the goal, a good goal, and that technology can and should do this.
- It says this under the guise of empowerment.
- It simplifies the complex and nuanced problems that disabled people can encounter.
- It assumes people have one disability, which is not often the case.
- Technology increasingly separates our bodies from the world.
The views from disabled people are often very different from the “professionals.” Many people value their experiences and community as disabled people.