Mobile devices and weak ties: a study of vision impairments and workplace access in Bangalore

Abstract

Purpose: To explore ways in which social and economic interactions are changed by access to mobile telephony. Method: This is a mixed-methods study of mobile phone use among 52 urban professionals with vision impairments in Bangalore, India. Results: Interviews and survey results indicated that mobile devices, specifically those with adaptive technology software, play a vital role as multi-purpose devices that enable people with disabilities to navigate economically and socially in an environment where accessibility remains a significant challenge. Conclusions: We found that mobile devices play a central role in enabling and sustaining weak ties, but also that these weak ties have important gender-specific implications. We found that women have less access to weak ties than men, which impacts women’s access to assistive technology (AT). This has potential implications for women’s sense of safety and independence, both of which are strongly related to AT access.

Implications for Rehabilitation

• Adaptive technologies increase individuals’ ability to keep in contact with casual connections or weak ties through phone calls or social media.

• Men tend to have stronger access to weak ties than women in India due to cultural impediments to independent access to public spaces.

• Weak ties are an important source of assistive technology (AT) due to the high rate of resale of used AT, typically through informal networks

• Assistive technology
• India
• mixed methods design
• mobile technology
• vision impairment
• weak ties

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the respondents that participated in this survey.

Declaration of interest

The authors report no declarations of interest. In the sample represented here we found that women with disabilities had less agency in their access to public spaces than men with disabilities. More restrictions were placed on women’s unescorted movement about society by family members due to cultural norms and a perceived lack of accessibility in public spaces. As a result women in our sample had smaller social networks, in terms of casual acquaintances or weak ties, and less access to institutional sources of AT knowledge such as DPOs. This was particularly true for women who had acquired their disability later in life. Network switching also points to the relative insularity of social networks of persons with vision impairments.