Disability, Society and Assistive Technology

The provision of assistive technology is an important individual and collective service of the welfare state. The state plays a significant role towards linking users and products and the matching of devices and users is both a science and an art. However, many people feel it is stigmatising to use individually designed assistive technologies as they often, in a subtle way, convey discriminating barriers in society. A major challenge of assistive technology is thus to reduce social exclusion, marginalization and importantly, to reduce individual risks and societal costs related to non-use, due to deficiencies in usability, aesthetics and design of the technologies.

This groundbreaking book discusses the relationship between society, disability and technology by using different empirical examples (e.g. school, everyday life) to show why disability studies and STS-studies (society, technology and science) are a fruitful approach to understanding and meeting these challenges by exploring the significance of the technologies for users, society and the field, and by identifying challenges, theoretically, empirically and practically. This book scrutinises the role of AT devices, as well as the organisational structure of the AT market, in relation to disabled people's lives.