The potential of technology to connect people and provide access to education, commerce, employment, and entertainment has never been greater or more rapidly changing. Communication technologies and new media promise to “revolutionize our lives” by breaking down barriers (Goggin and Newell xiii) and opening up worlds for disabled people (Ellis and Kent
2). Technology is often characterized as liberating – making up for social, educational, and physical barriers to full-participation in society. Particularly for people with disabilities, technology has been seen as a futuristic antidote for impairment. Through the wonders of technology, disability simply fades away or becomes inconsequential. Utopian fantasies about technology promise that “limitations can be transcended, and new freedoms found… [for] people with disabilities, [who are seen as] special beneficiaries” of technology (Goggin and Newell 110). Of course, we must point out a certain contradiction in putting ones faith in science to resolve or ameliorate the very problems that were created or constructed by science in the first place.

Yet, discourse on technology in relation to disability often focuses on the potential of assistive technology to replace human supports and promote greater independence. Certainly there is libratory potential, but some disability is socially created and the same social prejudices are often simply “reproduced in the digital world” (Ellis and Kent 2). That is, technology, like all of science, is inside culture – not separate from it.

The Problematic of [Assistive] Technology

Too often, discourse on technology in relation to disability often focuses on the potential of assistive technology to replace human supports and allow greater independence. Thus, technology that is disability focused or designed for disabled people is often “conceptualized as a form of ‘care’…administering to the biomedical/functional/normalizing needs of disabled bodies as commonly defined by service providers…and rehabilitative experts” (Campbell 52). These practices are grounded in normative, social, cultural, and economic practices, and, further reified in the design, manufacture, marketing, and implementation of technology. Many of the questions in which we are interested are not so much technological, but ideological. This is not to say there is no potential for “liberation” in technological advancements, but we cannot ignore ways that technology can and often does replicate many of the same social exclusions and normative thinking operating in the rest of society. As Ellis and Kent argue, we must address the “dangerous trend in digital design where socially constructed features from the analog world are migrated to the digital environment” (39). Disability focused technologies are “conceptualized as a form of ‘care’…susceptible to administering to the biomedical/functional/normalizing needs of disabled bodies as commonly defined by service providers, designers, retailers, and rehabilitative experts (52). In this conception, often the goal is “anti-dependency” and assimilation (53). All technologies – including disability focused ones – require maintenance. This fact of maintenance creates its own burden and can take on a life of their own – a fact that is often downplayed/ignored (Campbell).

In his essay Postscript on Control Societies, Gilles Deleuze introduces the notion of the control society – in which control is operative rather than power (i.e. Foucault’s disciplinary societies). Deleuze notes, “information is precisely the system of control.” Deleuze’sPostscript has been widely used as a lens for analyzing the Internet because of its clear applications to the form and function of the Internet. Flexibility is one of the core political principles of informatic control, described by Deleuze in his theorization of “control society.” This can been seen in the notion of distributed networks (like the Internet) which prize flexibility as a strategy for avoiding technical failure at the system level. In the context of disability, a defining concept of technology “designed” for disabled people is flexibility (e.g. in meeting technical, medical, or rehabilitative standards). Galloway notes that flexibility is a predicate of informatic control – a fundamental feature of Deleuze’s control society. We are interested in papers that explore some of the ways that technology creates unexpected and under-critiqued forms of control and exclusion of disabled people.

With these issues in mind, we seek essays that explore the paradoxical and contradictory intersection of disability and technology and that examine technology as a cultural practice grounded in normative, social, cultural, and economic practices, and, further reified in the design, manufacture, and marketing of technology which include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Cultural analyses of technology and disability

• Representations of disability and technology

• Pedagogy, inclusive design and digital education

We are interested in articles that focus on these multifaceted meanings of media and technology and explore their relationship with disability. Our consideration of media technology includes, but is not limited to:

• The Internet

• “Cloud” based technologies

• Games

• Mobile technologies

• Assistive technologies

• Social networks

Works Cited

Campbell, Fiona Kumari.Contours of Ableism : The Production of Disability and Abledness. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Print.

Deleuze, G. “Postscript on the Societies of Control.” October 59 (1992): 3-7. Print.

Ellis, Katie, and Mike Kent.Disability and New Media. Routledge Studies in New Media and Cyberculture. New York: Routledge, 2011. Print.

Galloway, Alexander R. Gaming : Essays on Algorithmic Culture. Electronic Mediations. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006. Print.

Goggin, Gerard, and Christopher Newell. Digital Disability : The Social Construction of Disability in New Media. Critical Media Studies. Lanham, UK: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. Print.

MacKenzie, Donald A., and Judy Wajcman. The Social Shaping of Technology. 2nd ed. Buckingham [Eng.] ; Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1999. Print.

Dr. David Bolt

Director, Centre for Culture & Disability Studies
ccds.hope.ac.uk

Editor, Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies
http://JLCDS.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk

Lecturer, Education and Disability Studies
http://www.hope.ac.uk/boltd

Founder, International Network of Literary & Cultural Disability Scholars
http://www.facebook.com/pages/International-Network-of-Literary-and-Cultural-Disability-Scholars/174137315933446
http://twitter.com/#!/INLCDS

Email: boltd@hope.ac.uk

Telephone: 0151 291 3346

Office: EDEN 128

Postal address: Graduate School, Faculty of Education, Liverpool Hope University, Liverpool, L16 9JD.

Coming soon: The Madwoman and The Blindman: Jane Eyre, Discourse, Disability, edited by David Bolt, Julia Miele Rodas, and Elizabeth J. Donaldson
http://www.ohiostatepress.org/books/book%20pages/bolt%20madwoman.html

Study Finds Medical Procedures Violating the Civil Rights of People with Disabilities

Stunting growth, removing body parts with no judicial review

For Immediate Release
5/22/2012

Contact: David Card
202.408.9514 x122
press@ndrn.org

Washington, DC – In a first of its kind study, the National Disability Rights Network (NDRN) determined that performing certain medical procedures or withholding life sustaining treatment in non-terminal situations without judicial review violates the civil rights of people with disabilities.

The initial catalyst for the report is the so-called Ashley Treatment which received worldwide attention 5 years ago. Ashley was a six-year-old child with developmental and physical disabilities whose growth was stopped through estrogen treatments and whose uterus and breast buds were removed. The intent of this treatment was to keep her permanently small and child-like. NDRN believes this practice is spreading worldwide.

“The thought of doctors and guardians, together, deciding to remove the body parts and stunt the growth of a child based on assumptions about their awareness and quality of life is shocking and disgusting,” said NDRN’s executive director, Curt Decker

Further investigations by the nation’s federally mandated Protection and Advocacy agencies, which NDRN represents in Washington, DC, have uncovered other cases in which medical treatment and even basic food and water are being denied to individuals with disabilities during minor illnesses with the intent of letting the illness progress until death.

“We have learned of one case in which the parents of a 13-year-old boy with a developmental disability refused to allow him access to antibiotics so that the cold he had would progress to pneumonia. They got their wish and the boy died,” said Decker.

“Every person is born with civil and human rights and an inherent dignity,” continued Decker. “The reality that this is happening in the United States is anathema to the core values that we as Americans say we hold. That it is happening to those unable to use their own voice is even worse. This report is meant to start the conversation about how society can and should make medical decisions that uphold the constitutional rights of all people with disabilities.”

The report, Devaluing People with Disabilities: Medical Procedures that Violate Civil Rights, puts individuals with disabilities at the center of discourse. It reviews the facts of Ashley X, as a case study and presents a continuum of similar experiences and treatment of individuals with disabilities within a context of medical decision making that devalues them as people and discriminates against them based on their disability.

The report explores the conflict of interest that medical decision making may present between a parent and their child. It describes the vital role that the legal and judicial systems have in ensuring that the civil and human rights of individuals with disabilities are protected regardless of their severity and in contrast to opinions regularly expressed in the medical and ethics community.

Finally, the report presents a series of recommendations for how the legal and medical systems at a loca
l, state and national level,
including protection and advocacy agencies, ethics committees, institutional review boards, and the courts can perform critical “watch-dog” functions to ensure that the human and civil rights of persons with disabilities are protected.

Find more information about the report and medical decision making here.

A copy of the report can be downloaded here.

# # #

The National Disability Rights Network (NDRN) is the nonprofit membership organization for the federally mandated Protection and Advocacy (P&A) Systems and the Client Assistance Programs (CAP) for individuals with disabilities. Collectively, the Network is the largest provider of legally based advocacy services to people with disabilities in the United States.

Complaint Alleges MesaCommunity College Student Experienced Discrimination

Phoenix, Arizona (May 22, 2012): The National Federation of the Blind, the nation’s leading advocate for the equal education of blind students, and Sebastian Ibanez, a blind student who recently graduated from Mesa Community College, have filed suit (Case No.: CV 12-907-PHX-NVW) against the college and the Maricopa Community College District, alleging discrimination against Mr. Ibanez and other blind students. The complaint alleges that Mr. Ibanez, as a blind student, could not register for his classes, complete online courses and assignments, access student services, or actively participate in his classes because of inaccessible technology purchased or deployed by the Maricopa Community College District and Mesa Community College. Among other things, college and third-party Web sites and software applications used for coursework and student services do not work with text-to-speech screen reading software, and “clickers” that are used to respond to questions in class cannot be operated independently by blind students. Most egregious of all, Mr. Ibanez was deliberately excluded from a class solely on the basis of his blindness. He attended the class but was told by the instructor that she did not feel comfortable teaching a blind student, and was subsequently electronically “dropped” from the class without his knowledge or consent.

Dr. Marc Maurer, President of the National Federation of the Blind, said: “Despite clear mandates for the equal education of students with disabilities contained in the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act, we continue to find that higher education institutions are not accommodating their blind students as required by federal law. As in too many other cases, this instance involves the needless and unlawful purchase and deployment of inaccessible technology. Worse yet, the case demonstrates again the deliberate disregard by some college faculty and staff for the rights of blind students. The National Federation of the Blind is once again forced to devote considerable time and resources to rectifying this discrimination. We will continue to do so until the day when battles like this one are no longer necessary. We cannot and will not tolerate unlawful discrimination against blind students, and we insist that they receive an education equal to that received by their sighted peers.”

The plaintiffs are represented in this matter by Joseph B. Espo of the Baltimore firm Brown, Goldstein, & Levy, LLP, and J.J. Rico of theArizona Center for Disability Law.

Desi Arnaz once said: “One of my biggest problems with comedy was that I did not understand some of the jokes.” I feel this way about American democracy.

Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers. (Aristotle)

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. (Oscar Wilde)

Oops. Now we’re back to Desi Arnaz.

**

From a notebook:

What the guide dog schools won’t tell you, or by turns, tell you imperfectly, is that guide dog teams will encounter public incomprehension and outright discrimination as they walk around. In my case this discovery came in New York City when I tried to get into a cab and the driver began screaming expletives. Despite this I got into the cab. His language and mine became an instant study in art for all the ingredients of creativity were present: tension, incomprehension, passion, and spontaneity.

Sitting stern as a tree in the backseat, I told him that the law permits guide dogs for the blind in all taxis–in fact guide dogs are allowed everywhere. Hell, I even had an ID card from the school with my picture and the dog’s picture and all the appropriate legalese. But the driver, my driver, did not believe in the bravery or happiness of others. He began revving his engine and revving up his shouting.

What can you do? My driver hated me and my dog and was refusing to budge. I was reciting the law. Oh the godforsaken wilderness of human rage. When you have a disability every moment of discrimination evokes all the others: you’re again the boy who was told he couldn’t play with others, couldn’t go to school with them, sat alone in a room.

**

In American democracy, contempt is the leavening agent. If the entire country is populated by people who are under the yoke of self-contempt, who will have enough heart for the nation? Chris Christie? Romney? Ben Bernanke?

“The Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department took an important stand last week, declaring that citizens have a First Amendment right to videotape the actions of police officers in public places and that seizure or destruction of such recordings violates constitutional rights.”

From The New York Times:

EDITORIAL: The Right to Record

The Justice Department took an important stand when it declared that citizens have a right to videotape the actions of police officers in public places.

http://nyti.ms/JJ0fZn

Stephen Kuusisto
Director
The Renee Crown University Honors Program
University Professor
Syracuse University

The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it. The line is Kipling’s. Here in America, which ostensibly is my own country, everything smells of fear. It’s an old smell hereabouts. Cotton Mather’s rotten breath, the sermons of slavery’s defenders, clergy all, the anthropological and racial exceptionalism taught at Harvard–consistent with subsequent massacres in the Philippines and Viet Nam–and now the post 9-11 militarized policing of the nation’s poor, it’s young, it’s people of color. The smell is thick as tear gas and incense.

Paul Ryan’s assault on social services smells like good corporate starch until you hang around, then it smells like bloody feathers. And what does a domestic drone smell like? I say it smells like Joseph McCarthy’s anti-Macassar, the one that kept the hair tonic off his favorite chair.

“Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?” (Nietzsche)

If you’re a raven there’s plenty of inspiration to go around. Especially with the help of Congress. Over at Buzzfeed they’re reporting:

“An amendment that would legalize the use of propaganda on American audiences is being inserted into the latest defense authorization bill, BuzzFeed has learned.

The amendment would “strike the current ban on domestic dissemination” of propaganda material produced by the State Department and the Pentagon, according to the summary of the law at the House Rules Committee’s official website.

The tweak to the bill would essentially neutralize two previous acts—the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 and Foreign Relations Authorization Act in 1987—that had been passed to protect U.S. audiences from our own government’s misinformation campaigns.”

It smells like greenbacks and the fear of foreigners, namely, our own people.

Friend W is rightly exerting his spleen at the loss of civil liberties in the United States. I click the “Like” button. Meantime, Friend B is photographing rabbits. I click “Like” again because I do like rabbits. But Friend F is lamenting the “war on women” just below and I click “Like” because I do not like the war on women but I’m too tired to write a proper comment. I need help. I need a bowl of old fashioned Finnish thistle soup. Something unspecified is ailing me, or might be. Damn, that soup was good. It made you want to howl in the cold. Campbell’s doesn’t make it.

The harm that is done by a religion is of two sorts, the one depending on the kind of belief which it is thought ought to be given to it, and the other upon the particular tenets believed. As regards the kind of belief: it is thought virtuous to have Faith–that is to say, to have a conviction which cannot be shaken by contrary evidence. Or, if contrary evidence might induce doubt, it is held that contrary evidence must be suppressed. On such grounds, the young are not allowed to hear arguments, in Russia, in favor of capitalism, or, in America, in favor of Communism. This keeps the faith of both intact and ready for internecine war. The conviction that it is important to believe this or that, even if a free inquiry would not support the belief, is one which is common to almost all religions and which inspires all systems of state education. The consequence is that the minds of the young are stunted and are filled with fanatical hostility both to those who have other fanaticisms and, even more virulently, to those who object to all fanaticisms. A habit of basing convictions upon evidence, and of giving to them only that degree of certainty which the evidence warrants, would, if it became general, cure most of the ills from which the world is suffering. But at present, in most countries, education aims at preventing the growth of such a habit, and men who refuse to profess belief in some system of unfounded dogmas are not considered suitable as teachers of the young.

Some days I wake to a memory of first books, by which I mean the first books I read in earnest and under the gun of a university education. By the time I was a sophomore there were two books that were heavily prescribed: Plato’s “Republic” and Eric Auerbach’s “Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature”. The latter was the anodyne to the former, offering what Monty Python might have called “Plato’s good bits” but for all of Auerbach’s deterministic foregrounding of Platonic representation of “the real” –all of it as elegant as can be, I sensed the systemic cruelty in Plato and by turns I saw the academic wave of the hand, the moue of easy dismissal when students brought it up. These lines by Bertrand Russell were then, and now, important reminders of the cultural fallout as it were:

“That Plato’s Republic should have been admired, on its political side, by decent people is perhaps the most astonishing example of literary snobbery in all history. Let us consider a few points in this totalitarian tract. The main purpose of education, to which everything else is subordinated, is to produce courage in battle. To this end, there is to be a rigid censorship of the stories told by mothers and nurses to young children; there is to be no reading of Homer, because that degraded versifier makes heroes lament and gods laugh; the drama is to be forbidden, because it contains villains and women; music is to be only of certain kinds, which, in modern terms, would be “Rule Britannia” and “The British Grenadiers.” The government is to be in the hands of a small oligarchy, who are to practice trickery and lying–trickery in manipulating the drawing of lots for eugenic purposes, and elaborate lying to persuade the population that there are biological differences between the upper and lower classes. Finally, there is to be a large-scale infanticide when children are born otherwise than as a result of governmental swindling in the drawing of lots.”

So I find myself reading and reminiscing just as Congress wants to legalize propaganda and the Obama administration is seeking to curtail press freedoms and the rhetoric of the Ryan budget is aimed at eliminating the poor fro health services and social security disability assistance.