Disability at the centre of digital inclusion: assessing a new moment in technology and rights

ABSTRACT

Disability is gaining visibility as an important topic in digital inclusion and inequality. More than this, disability is being placed at the centre of contemporary discourses of digital inclusion and rights, especially in relation to pressing social challenges from AI, data, automation, and the next wave of Internet and mobile technologies. In this paper, we assess this new moment in technology and rights, considering the prospects, challenges, and key elements needed for advancing disability in digital inclusion and digital rights.

KEYWORDS:

• Disability
• digital inclusion
• human rights
• Internet accessibility
• audio description
• captioning
• mobiles

Acknowledgments

Our thanks to the reviewers and editor for their helpful suggestions on an earlier draft of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council [FT130100097]; Australian Research Council [DE130101712].

Notes on contributors

Gerard Goggin

Gerard Goggin is a Wee Kim Wee Chair in Communication Studies at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is also Professor of Media and Communications at the University of Sydney, and an ARC Future Fellow. He is author of various books on disability and media, most recently Listening to Disability: Voices of Democracy (2019; with Cate Thill and Rosemary Kayess), Routledge Companion to Disability and Media (2019; with Beth Haller and Katie Ellis), and Normality & Disability: Intersections Among Norms, Laws and Culture (2018; with Linda Steele and Jess Cadawallader).

Katie Ellis

Katie Ellis is an Associate professor and Director of the Centre for Culture and Technology in Internet Studies at Curtin University. Her research explores the social and cultural dimensions of disability, television, and digital and networked media, extending across both issues of representation and active possibilities for social inclusion. She has authored and edited 19 books and numerous articles on the topic, and is series editor of Routledge Research in Disability and Media Studies. Her current projects include co-editing The Routledge Companion to Disability and Media with Gerard Goggin and Beth Haller, and Manifestos for the Future of Critical Disability Studies with Rosemarie Garland Thomson, Mike Kent and Rachel Robertson.

Wayne Hawkins

Wayne Hawkins is a doctoral candidate at Sydney University. Wayne’s research is a critical disability studies analysis of Australian telecommunications policies post Australia’s adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, investigating how the principles of disability access and inclusion enshrined in the Convention have been implemented in telecommunications policies. Wayne is also Director of Inclusion with the Australian Communications Consumer Action network (ACCAN) and leads ACCAN’s work in telecommunications, internet and converged media access for consumers with disability. Wayne has a Bachelor of Business Administration from the City University of New York and a Master in Public Policy from Sydney University.