Some Reflections on Access Equity - Access as Empowerment - The Research Center on Computing & Society

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Charles E. M. Dunlop

Access as Empowerment

Arguments for providing assistive technology to persons with disabilities could be made from a variety of directions. For example, as Dr. Maner has mentioned, there are severe economic repercussions issuing from a failure to provide employment opportunities for individuals with disabilities. He also points to a moral imperative, which I would like to amplify here.

Although there may be no fundamental or inherent right to computer access, I agree with Maner that, for people with disabilities, the right to assistive technology is part and parcel of human rights that are fundamental: the right to control one’s own life; the right to self-expression; the right to participate in democratic institutions; the right to develop one’s human potential [see also 4: 29]. Granting computer access does not mean granting a right. The relevant rights are already there. Thus, granting access to persons who are disabled amounts to providing them with a vehicle for the exercise of their essential human rights. For them, especially, access is empowerment.

Rights, of course, involve responsibilities. So, if someone has a right to assistive technology, there must exist a correlative responsibility to provide it. Frequently, discussions of responsibility take a rather narrow perspective, focusing on “excusing conditions,” or the circumstances under which a person is not responsible. John Ladd, however, has developed what he calls a “comprehensive concept of moral responsibility” [5]. It particularly emphasizes the promotion of the welfare of others, and unlike narrower conceptions, it is non-exclusive. In other words, if I am responsible for promoting the welfare of others, it doesn’t follow that you are not. If we look at responsibility from this positive, broad perspective, I think we gain a useful basis for the claim that there exists a social responsibility to provide assistive technology to persons with disabilities. Obviously, this claim is subject to a number of constraints, e.g., scarcity of resources, high costs, and differing political philosophies. But these are matters of implementation, and some of the discussion at this conference has pointed out ways of dealing with them.

I have suggested that access may be viewed as empowerment – empowerment to exercise one’s basic human rights. One of those rights is the right to self-expression. I want to close my discussion with a passage from the Irish writer, Christopher Nolan. This comes from his autobiography titled Under the Eye of the Clock, published when he was 21 years old. Nolan suffered oxygen deprivation at birth, has never been able to speak, and possesses very little voluntary motor coordination. His initial verbal communication was not accomplished by computer, but through a mouthstick with which he laboriously pecked out letters on a typewriter while his mother’s hands cradled his head. With a word processor and an adaptive interface, written communication is a little easier now. Even so, the effort required is extreme, and Nolan’s description reminds us the promise and limitations of assistive technology, and the courage of those who use it:

Despite all hope, Joseph lay in his bed at night worrying and wondering. He was mesmerized by the promise within technology. Old sufferings would never again be silently lamented by speechless man, now great men were busy wrangling popular theses around yelling joy in brain-damaged man’s budding rescue. Joseph thought about his research. The freedom to move muscles voluntarily was denied him; he asked movement but all he ever got was busy, jerky, muffled movement. Hands that could involuntarily give knockout blows to anyone or anything near, became stiff and hesitant on being given a brain command. Similarly, when he tried to give a sideway flick of his chin to the switch for his computer, he found the effort exaggerated to mountainous proportions, so much so that his whole body had to gear itself in readiness to give what should have been but a slight flick of his head. Then as if that war was not great enough, he still found another cruel threat confronting him. He couldn’t even determine the precise moment at which to attempt the flick of his head. He was used to fouling-up his moment of anticipation when about to receive communion; he could wildly open his mouth when the priest entered his room or he could open it while the priest was saying the preparatory prayers, but by the time he needed to open his mouth to receive the host, his moment had passed and only sad desperation remained. So busy thinking was he that he jumped with fright, he nearly forgot his success at switching on and switching off his radio. But battles latent waited. He had to teach his muscles how to cram power into just one local movement and he had to try to find a way to anticipate the moment when he must nominate his ‘go’ signal. Seeing his needs didn’t mean he could solve his dilemma, but he dreamt nonetheless. [8: 85 – 6]

We’re here today because we want to encourage and share that dream.

University of Michigan at Flint

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