Introduction: disability participation in the digital economy

This special issue brings together original research papers from a diverse range of disciplines in disability studies, media and communication studies, social policy, business and management, community health, economic anthropology, and sociology to explore the opportunities for economic participation of people with disabilities enabled by digital and social media technologies and their political and social implications on respective communities and societies. It is known that the digital economy is developing rapidly and unevenly worldwide. This heralds a transformative force creating jobs and driving future economic activity. Digital entrepreneurship and employment are seen as a core benefit of the digital economy in that it can lead to economic growth, job creation, and social innovation. It is also seen as offering opportunities in bridging the disability digital divide, and addressing longstanding issues of accessibility, inclusive and innovative design (Pullin, 2011), design justice (Costanzo-Chock, 2018), and digital inequality for people with disabilities (Goggin, 2018; Lazar, Goldstein, & Taylor, 2015).

Over the past 15 years, there has been a dynamic emerging body of research that charts and grapples with the shaping and power relations of disability and digital technology. From early work captured in a pioneering 2006 special issue of Information, Communication & Society (Goggin & Newell, 2006), the agenda on disability, digital technology, and society has deepened to represent an important set of perspectives that bring disability to the attention of researchers in the field (Ellcessor, 2016; Ellcessor & Kirkpatrick, 2017; Ellis & Kent, 2011). Crucially, it also shows that disability figures in many contemporary aspects of emerging digital societies and economies in ways that we often do not acknowledge, let alone understand (Alper, 2017; Ellis, 2016).

Hence the research on disability participation in the digital economy presented in this set of papers is situated within the context of the expansion of digital technologies, platforms and economy, as well as a growing body of literature that describes and critiques the digital ecosystem. A constellation of terms has been used to describe new and emerging forms of social and economic relations, such as ‘platform capitalism’ (Srnicek, 2017) and ‘platform society’ (van Dijk, Poell, & de Waal, 2018). A rich vocabulary has been used to describe new forms of labour and labourers, such as cyber-proletariat (Dyer-Whitheford, 2015), platform labour (van Doorn, 2017), relational labour (Baym, 2015), productive labour, aspirational labour (Duffy, 2017), and digital labour (Fuchs, 2016). Marxist scholarship has viewed the new configuration of the digital economy as ‘the second enclosure movement’ (Evans, 2005) and ‘digital depression’ (Schiller, 2014). We have witnessed increasing instability, declining income and rights for the working people, and increasing concentration, exploitation and control of iCapitalism (Scholz, 2016). Digital labour, which takes the form of ‘wage labor, slave labor, unpaid labor, precarious labor, and freelance labor,’ forms the new frontier of iCapitalistm, within and between nation-states along such division lines as class, wealth, and culture (Fuchs, 2016, p. 20).

Such critiques of digital labour, platforms, and economy have been echoed in the literature on the experiences of people with disabilities as they engage with digital technologies, as the articles in this special issue illustrate. It is widely understood that people with disabilities often experience bullying, exclusion, marginalisation and rejection in various parts of their lives. They often experience workplace bias and discrimination and are exploited as low-end and cheap labour. When they go online, they often experience the complex intersections of disability, technology, labour, and selfhood in the digital economy. Like anybody else, people with disabilities also experience the common problems associated with digital labour, such as stress associated with long working hours and high-level dedication and vigilance, and vulnerability to online trolling, abuse and hostility. Furthermore, they are required to respond to and adapt to techno-social norms and infrastructure that are not designed to accommodate disabilities.

Here we see the paradox of economic participation and wellbeing for people with disabilities: on one hand, it is recognised that employment and work are enabling; that the ability to gain an income is empowering and even life-changing. On the other hand, the mainstream job market can be debilitating and exploiting and reinforce structural inequality and barriers for people with disabilities. Such a paradox is also played out on the Internet and in the digital economy, where the promise of technology to overcome social barriers is alongside digital exclusion of people with disabilities whose online activities vary depending on their disability, digital skills, and socioeconomic conditions (Dobransky & Hargittai, 2016; Vicente & Lopez, 2010).

However, some people with disabilities can ‘find new and creative ways to navigate the potentially disabling technologies they must use’ (see Johnson in this special issue; Fisher, Yu, Li, & Goggin, 2018). They take the digital opportunities to make a change. By doing so, they destabilise dominant understandings of the language and practices of digital labour and entrepreneurship. As the articles in this special issue demonstrate, some people with disabilities value opportunities to contribute, be creative, and help each other. They value the positive experience of being able to work in virtual reality and through digital platforms, despite various limitations. They view their digital labour as self-fulfilling not exploitive, as contribution (e.g., voluntary work) not profit driven. They value creativity and opportunities to make a difference, and de-emphasis sales or income precarity. In other words, labour and self-worth, creativity and contribution are combined in the creation of an entrepreneurial self and inclusive citizenship. Here we see the intersection of labouring selfhood, entrepreneurial subjectivity, and active citizenship in digital economic participation by people with disabilities.

The creation of new peer-to-peer (P2P) flows of information and interaction in the context of a sharing economy and platform economy, for example, has the potential to plug informational gaps or the disability digital divide through collaborative innovation for both service providers and service users. New digital technology such as artificial intelligence, P2P platforms such as Second Life and Trip Advisor, and novel business models of start-up social enterprises have the potential to disrupt the established power and moral order that justify current patterns of social disablement. However, such potential cannot be realised without the development of opportunities for active citizenship of all parties concerned.

National governments, civil society organisations, private and social enterprises, and disability activists have considered digital technologies and platforms potentially useful in improving the life quality and life-chances for people with disabilities and in bringing about social inclusion for all people, particularly in health care, education, and employment. Efforts have been made to remove barriers of access to technologies, training and acquisition of skills in ways that are suitable for users with disabilities. Assistance programs are also implemented to ease the financial burden on people with disabilities to access and acquire these technologies. Innovative and inclusive approaches are needed to challenge the ableist paradigms, norms and infrastructure that structure people’s access, sociality, content, and labour online. This special issue explores some of the complexities of disability participation in the digital economy.

Seven articles are included in this special issue. A number of papers are situated within the social models of disability and the human rights framework espoused by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (Barnes, Mercer, & Shakespeare, 2010; Lazar & Stein, 2017; UN, 2006). They are characterised by the underlying belief that, while identifying barriers (whether environmental, technical, or attitudinal) to disability participation in society is important, it is also time to consider the effects and outcomes of disability engagement in and interventions through digital technologies, platforms, and economy on inclusive citizenship. The focus on effects or outcomes from access to and use of the Internet and other digital devices and platforms aligns well with the theory of the third level of digital divide (Ragnedda, 2017; van Dijk, 2018). As in the social model of disability, the theory of the third level of digital divide is less concerned with issues of digital access, usability, resources and skills. It is more concerned with the social, economic, and personal outcome or consequence of people’s engagement with digital technologies and platforms, their ability to exploit the digital affordance and opportunities to reconstruct selfhood and improve life chances both online and offline. The papers underscore the crucial role of disability as an expression of diversity when grappling with the nature, role, coordinates, and affordances of the digital economy.

The first three articles examine the engagement with digital platforms (Second Life & Twitch.tv) by people with disabilities, their economic activities on such platforms, and the impact on their identity and wellbeing in general. People build their communities, show their creativity, and make an income as live streamers, authors or writers, designers and builders (of virtual goods, gadgets, furniture, clothing, or buildings), volunteers, and creators. Together these articles reveal how digital technologies and platforms rework the interplay of representation, selfhood, work, and value – in ways that remain culturally specific and embedded in forms of inequality both online and offline.

Tom Boellstorff’s article examines the entrepreneurial selfhood of people with disabilities on the 3D role-play virtual world Second Life, which has witnessed significant disability participation since its founding in 2003. As a world-leading expert on Second Life, Boellstorff has drawn upon data from years of immersive research in the virtual world to explore disability experiences of entrepreneurism, focusing on intersections of creativity, risk, and inclusion. Many such residents engage in forms of entrepreneurship that destabilise dominant understandings of digital labour. Most make little or no profit; some labour at a loss. Something is being articulated through languages and practices of entrepreneurship, something that challenges the ableist paradigms that still deeply structure both digital socialities and conceptions of labour. People with disabilities in Second Life frame ‘entrepreneur’ as a selfhood characterised by creativity and contribution, not just initiative and risk. In navigating structural barriers with regard to income and access, including affordances of the virtual world itself, they implicitly contest reconfigurations of personhood under neoliberalism, where the labouring self becomes framed not as a worker earning an hourly wage, but as a business with the ‘ability’ to sell services.

The framework of identity, selfhood, and disability in Second Life is also taken by Donna Z. Davis and Karikarn Chansiri in their ethnographic research on the role of avatar choice and work experience in the virtual reality of people with disabilities. They examine how virtual representation of self can impact on the selfhood and work opportunities of people with disabilities in the virtual environment. They argue that the ability to choose avatar appearance – whether in human likeness, an animal form, or gender-blending and swapping form – to represent, symbembody (the combination of virtual-world and physical-world identities), or complete reconstruct themselves in Second Life influences their ability to gain access to a social network, to be a leader in that network, and to find work. A positive message is told from the three case studies in the article: the ability to choose an avatar gives people with disabilities the agency to engage in parasocial interaction in the virtual world and create work and income as a result. Such findings contribute to our understanding of visual bias in the workplace and how emerging virtual reality technologies may open new avenues for meaningful work and social interactions of people with disabilities.

Mark Johnson’s paper examines the experiences of live streaming by broadcasters with disabilities, mental health issues, or physical health issues on Twitch.tv. It discusses the online experience – both positive and negative aspects – of these live streamers with chronic conditions. It illustrates how people with chronic conditions make a living and even a career from the livestreaming platform despite physical, social, material, and technological disadvantages. The article argues that new forms of digital labour, work, employment relations, patterns of consumption, and community formation can be potentially emancipatory for streamers with disabilities on Twitch.tv, which is viewed as an entrepreneurial space by these people. This space is not one without challenges, where disability, technology and sociality intersect online.

The fourth and fifth articles are written by Australia-based scholars in management, health, social policy and community service. Both articles examine service-provision social enterprises in the context of policy change for service provision to people with disabilities in Australia, with the launch of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) in 2013. They evaluate and critique the new model of disability service provision when it is organised via digital technologies and the impact on inclusive citizenship through public–private, for-profit and non-for-profit collaborations in such service provision.

Ian Mcloughlin and colleagues take us away from the virtual world of gamers, makers, and streamers with disabilities to the digital disruptive practices of disability service providers in Australia. Their article uses a case study of a start-up social enterprise seeking to provide a TripAdvisor style service to examine the potential for social innovation to ‘disrupt’ current models of service. As participants and advisers in the start-up enterprise, Mcloughlin and colleagues provide a new perspective on digital technologies and disability by focusing on the moral division of labour in service provision and selection in the disability sector. Their engaged scholarship illuminates a core issue in the relation between digital platforms, service provision, and the interest and agency of people with disabilities. That is, any innovative or disruptive practices go beyond digitalisation, datafication or novel platform business models. To be effective they must also build new moral orders, collaborations and partnerships between consumers (service recipients) and service providers.

Hazel Maxwell, Simon Darcy, and Hilary Yerbury take a different approach to service-provision social enterprises in Australia and question the limitations of ‘marketplace’ approach in Australia’s NDIS. Their paper is more concerned with the effect of intra-sectoral hybridity (among the government, NPOs, and social enterprises) in disability service provision on inclusive citizenship. The service provided to people with disabilities here is customised mobile phone technologies (both hardware and software) for people with high disability support needs. The service is a major initiative of an NPO, its social enterprise spinoff, government seed funding, and a major private telecommunications company. The paper challenges the optimism with which the digital economy is presented as a solution to issues of inequality, and raises concern about further conflicts, dilemmas, and social exclusion through digital technologies. The paper points out that under pressure to demonstrate ‘success’ on multiple levels, the NPO/social enterprise prioritised their relationship with the government funder and private enterprise over the NPO–client relationship. This has the potential to undermine the exercise of inclusive citizenship by turning participants into consumers.

The last two articles focus on China and Korea respectively. They look at the macro-level political and cultural structures that condition the development and deployment of ICTs for economic development in the Asian context, as well as a micro-level analysis of how people with disabilities use these ICTs and platforms. Both articles highlight the role of the broader politico-socio-cultural network and structures that shape the outcome of people’s access and use of the Internet for their economic and personal wellbeing.

The article on China, by Zhongxuan Lin, Zhian Zhang, and Liu Yang, is a qualitative case study about an entrepreneurial man with physical disabilities and his job-seeking website called ‘helping each other’ for people with disabilities in China. The case study is situated in the context of China’s neoliberal governance of its population and against the background of the rapid development of China’s information and communication industries. It takes a political economy approach to critique disability entrepreneurship and employment in the ‘Internet + Disability’ policy framework laid out by the Chinese government in 2015. Disability entrepreneurship and employment in China is driven by the necessity for survival, due to uneven government and social support for people with disabilities. Their economic activity is driven by their desire and motivation to make a contribution to household income so they will not be a burden on their families. The article points out the promise and precarity of disability entrepreneurship and employment. It also raises issues about debilitation and exploitation of people with disabilities in the name of entrepreneurial philanthropy.

The last article in this special issue focuses on South Korea. Written by Kyung Mee Kim and Ju Hee Hwang, it uses quantitative analysis of a large data from the 2016 Digital Divide Report of the National Information Society Agency to explore the difference in the online economic activities of people with and without disabilities in Korea. Kim and Hwang use multiple regression analysis to investigate the impact of socioeconomic characteristics, internet access, and internet skills on online economic activities. They find that people (with and without disabilities) are more likely to engage in online economic activities if they have higher levels of education, live in urban areas, are already employed, or have greater internet skills. Social support through formal and informal networks, such as living in a two-generation or more household, also has a positive impact on people’s online activities. These results highlight the importance of education and internet skill training for people with disabilities, as well as social support systems to learn to use the internet in diverse ways.

The seven articles are valuable snapshots of the relation between digital economy and disability. They illustrate some of the outcomes of participation in the digital economy of people with disabilities in a wide variety of national and platform contexts. These outcomes – both positive and negative – reinforce existing inequalities in all domains of society. The significance of the articles goes beyond disability and digital economy to all domains of social sciences, including business, management, health and education, politics, public policy, media and communication, and cultural studies. We hope this special issue will be one of many contributions to multi- or interdisciplinary studies that examine the consequences of changing social policy and digital technologies, as we all are affected by this endeavour.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.