Abstract
The rapid development of information and communication technology (ICT) has had increasing influence, both positive and negative, on people with disabilities. How does ICT impact people with disabilities and what are the subjective experiences, feelings, attitudes, and understanding of people with disabilities under this influence? To address these questions, we conducted experiential and experimental research – one of the authors, Hui Heng, a visually impaired person, conducted a total of ten livestreams of his daily commute – to explore and experience vividly the obstacles and opportunities of ICT usage in a creative way. We argue that this experiential and experimental livestreaming demonstrates people with disabilities’ right to be seen and people without disabilities’ right to observe and recognize the diversity of our society.
Introduction
Over the past several decades, the rapid development of information and communication technology (ICT) has demonstrated potential to increase the digital accessibility and digital inclusion of people with disabilities. Previous studies have focused on factors that influence digital accessibility, such as digital competence, economy, age, cognitive abilities, technical equipment, and digital connection. Other research has explored ICT and the impact of digital accessibility on people with disabilities, including the establishment of interpersonal relationships, increased social interaction, and the development online communities and identities. However, there remain questions that have not been studied adequately. For example, how do different barriers influence people with disabilities’ digital usage? What are the subjective experiences of people with disabilities? What types of new opportunities are offered through digital usage?
To address these questions, we conducted an experiential and experimental study by inviting people with disabilities to participate in our research. As Charlton (Citation1998) argued, ‘Nothing about us without us’ (17); inclusion is paramount. People with disabilities must be involved in exploring and experiencing the obstacles and opportunities of ICT and digital usage. Accordingly, Hui Heng, a visually impaired person who has used ICT for approximately 15 years, was involved in this experiential research and as an author of this article. Specifically, we chose an interesting and creative digital method, livestreaming the daily commute, for the experiment and experiences. Livestreaming is not only a vivid means of demonstrating the obstacles and opportunities of ICT for people with disabilities, but it is also an interactive media that can include the livestreaming viewers’ responses and discussions, which augment what we know about the ICT opportunities. More importantly, livestreaming was Hui Heng’s choice and decision:
I have been thinking about doing something with we-media recently… I want to do some live streaming during my commute… It (live streaming) can give more people a chance to see how a visually impaired person commutes in such crowded cities every day.
We conducted a total of ten livestreams between December 2020 and January 2021 in Guangzhou, China. In the livestreaming of his commute, viewers could see the inconvenience of the city’s roads to the visually impaired and the unexpected events encountered on Hui Heng’s commute, for example, the uneven pavement, the cracks and obstacles on the road, and the absence of tactile paving. We conducted follow-up recorded discussions after every livestream event to understand Hui Heng’s subjective experience and to further explore the obstacles and opportunities of livestreaming that he perceived and faced.
Results and discussion
Obstacles to overcome
People with disabilities are usually in unequal positions in terms of ICT, often lacking the opportunity to access the Internet. Even when they possess digital accessibility, they still face additional barriers and obstacles compared with the general public, especially the hardware and software that do not adequately address the needs of people with disabilities. Although Hui Heng has 15 years of ICT-usage experience, he still faced many barriers and obstacles during his livestreaming. For example, due to wider socio-economic inequalities that lead to a digital divide and digital exclusion, Hui Heng was not able to purchase, access, and use the ideal ICT; he was only able to use an outdated smartphone as his livestreaming equipment. Based on his own experience, Hui Heng opted for WeChat as the livestreaming application (app) because it is the app that he uses most often thus relatively convenient in his daily life.
Despite his familiarity with WeChat, the complicated operation of the livestreaming app still affected Hui Heng’s experience of livestreaming. For example, he could not set up the correct livestreaming camera (front camera or rear camera) by himself, and had difficulty with other complicated aspects of the operation interface:
I did not hear of a camera option at all … It [the phone] doesn’t read the switching function of the front and rear camera or the like… It’s okay to start simply like this, but in fact, there are still some problems. For example, it seems to have a connection (share microphone) function, but I can’t find it, and I don’t know where it is.
To overcome these technical obstacles, we work together to explore the features and operation of the application, especially how to switch the camera and respond to viewers’ comments during the livestreaming. But Hui Heng still needed to practice many times and even for weeks to understand the functions and to grasp the working process and operation methods. Even then, it remained difficult for him to take livestreaming video that satisfied viewers just by holding a phone in his hand. Due to the low position of the mobile phone camera, there was little effective content on the video screen; many viewers could not understand the livestreaming video the first time. The viewers often asked, ‘What is he doing?’ We had to add some obvious prompt words and phrases for the livestreaming descriptions, including visually impaired, commute, daily life, and more to help viewers understand the livestreaming content.
Opportunities to discover
Beyond the obstacles to overcome in ICT usage, there were also new opportunities to discover. However, previous studies have been focused primarily on the possibilities of disability equality, equity, dignity, identity, community, civic engagement, social participation, and even basic human rights; these studies have investigated at a broad and abstract level. By involving people with disabilities in the research, this experiential study attempted to go one step further to discover new opportunities in both a subjective sense and a concrete sense.
First, livestreaming offered Hui Heng the right to be seen by the public, a visible way to record and share his personal life with the public. Despite the development of inclusive politics and changes in social attitudes, people with disabilities in China still lack public visibility, due to a general lack of understanding of disabilities and the absence of true barrier-free facilities. This kind of public invisibility may deeply impact people with disabilities’ social inclusion. Hui Heng expressed his predicament:
It feels like you are in a glass room. You can see people coming and going on the street outside, but you have no connection with them, no communication. It seems that you are in society, but you have nothing to do with it. It feels like you are not integrated into society at all.
Hui Heng understands people with disabilities’ reality and the problem of public invisibility. He expressed his need for visibility during our recorded discussions and daily communication, sharing: ‘I also want to be seen and need other’s company.’ He believes that not being seen or heard is a critical issue for people with disabilities, which may lead to other larger and more severe issues. Therefore, Hui Heng had a strong internal motivation to use livestreaming to be seen by the public and to struggle for disability visibility in the public. Through livestreaming, the public saw not only Hui Heng’s experience but also the general barriers and obstacles Hui Heng encountered during his commute.
Second, livestreaming also offered Hui Heng the possibility of breaking the stereotypes about disabilities in society. One stereotype in China was that people with disabilities heavily rely on others’ help for daily life, which is not necessarily true and is not welcomed by people with disabilities. Hui Heng told these stories after his livestreaming:
A woman who helped me at the subway station was surprised that I also had to work, and a subway station worker thought I am very powerful because I often go out by myself.
Indeed, during livestreaming we found that there were always passersby willing to help Hui Heng, motivated by courtesy but acting without Hui Heng’s permission. Hui Heng told us ‘Some people walked over, grabbed my arm, and pulled me away without asking if I needed help.’ Hui Heng sought to use livestreaming to challenge or even break the stereotypical image of people with disabilities’ dependency. Specifically, his livestreams covered his daily commute that he undertook by himself, demonstrating how he crossed the road, took the elevator, and took the subway, and his capability and degree of independence.
Third, the study’s livestreaming also provided opportunities for people without disabilities to improve their understanding of disability. During our experiential research, Hui Heng conducted ten livestreams. The highest number of viewers reached 1,129, and many viewers ‘liked’ Hui Heng in the livestream space. They used emoji such as smiley faces and thumbs up to comment and to encourage Hui Heng. Through livestreaming, they could witness the actual daily life of a visually impaired man and even discuss details such as how canes can help visually impaired people walk alone. Hui Heng believes that this kind of discussion is meaningful, describing here interactions with someone who was not disabled:
In fact, the discussion is useful not only for me but also for him. I believe once he gets involved in discussion, he would experience some change also. It would be useful for him. Many things [the understanding between disabled and non-disabled people] may not be as good as imagined, but you have to do it first.
Conclusion
Involving a disabled person in the research, we conducted an experimental and experiential study to investigate the obstacles and opportunities of ICT and digital usage. Beyond the conventional ICT obstacles within people with disabilities’ digital usage, we saw how the hardware, software, and operation of smartphones all create specific barriers for people with disabilities, including Hui Heng who participated in our study. However, ICT, especially livestreaming, may also provide new opportunities—for people with disabilities to be seen by the public and to break stereotypes about disability and for people without disabilities to better understand disability. These new possibilities can be termed ‘the power to see’ that demonstrates people with disabilities’ right to be seen as well as people without disabilities’ right to observe and recognize the diversity of our society (Lin and Yang Citation2021, 1).
However, we should not romanticize or imagine optimistically the development of ICT and the potential promise of digital inclusion. Technology, including ICT, is not necessarily value-free; therefore, we need to bring people, especially people with disabilities, back to studies and imagination of ICT. The results of this study lead us to rethink the political issue of ICT and the politics of disability and, more specifically, require us to involve more people with disabilities in future studies.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.