Disability and Technology

This edited collection brings together keynote articles from the journal Disability & Society to provide a comprehensive and though-provoking exploration of the place of technology in disabled people's lives, documenting and analysing the growing impact of technology on disability and society over recent decades. The authors explore theoretical, empirical and moral dilemmas that arise with the changing relationship between technological change and the lives, aspirations and possibilities of disabled people. The volume is organised into three parts which consider early foundational work connecting disability and technology; key empirical studies related to the optimum use of technologies for independence and inclusion; and new moral and social dynamics thrown up by technological developments for disabled people's lives.

Michele Moore is Professor of Inclusive Education at Northumbria University, UK, and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Disability & Society. Alan Roulstone is Professor of Disability Studies at the University of Leeds, UK. Alison Sheldon is a Teaching Fellow in Disability Studies at the University of Leeds, UK. Jennifer Harris is Professor Emeritus in Social Work at the University of Dundee, UK.

Series Editor's Preface Part I: Framing the relationship between disability and technology 1. Communications technology - empowerment or disempowerment? 2. In whose service? Technology, care and disabled people: The case for a disability politics perspective 3. Information and communication technologies and the opportunities of disabled persons in the Swedish labour market 4. Enacting disability: how can science and technology studies inform disability studies? Part II: Empirical studies of technology and reduction of disabling barriers 5. The use, role and application of advanced technology in the lives of disabled people in the UK 6. A common open space or a digital divide? A social model perspective on the online disability community in China 7. Increases in wheelchair use and perceptions of disablement 8. Back to the future, disability and the digital divide Part III: Moral and social tensions between disability and technology 9. Disability, identity and disclosure in the online dating environment 10. 'I know, I can, I will try': Youths and adults with intellectual disabilities in Sweden using information and communication technology in their everyday life 11. Implants and ethnocide: Learning from the cochlear implant controversy 12. Cyborg anxiety: Oscar Pistorius and the boundaries of what it means to be human Conclusion