Some Reflections on Access Equity
Charles E. M. Dunlop
Technology in a Social Context
Recently in RISKS-FORUM Digest there was a lively debate on the topic of voting by telephone. The system under discussion would involve a voice-response system, in which a synthetic voice guides the caller through a voting menu. Why have such a system? Lots of reasons were advanced, but one of them was that telephone-voting might increase voter turnout. This is an empirical question, and one sure to be investigated. Whatever the outcome, however, the point of interest here is the idea of applying a technological solution to what seems at bottom to be a social and political problem. Too often, technological proposals are separated from the social contexts in which they should be viewed.
Assistive technology can provide dramatic new routes of access for individuals who are disabled – access to employment, social contact, political processes, the procurement of goods and services, and self-expression. At the same time, the assistive technologies themselves are embedded in social structures that must also be made appropriately responsive.
For instance, communications devices provide a solution to the unemployment of persons who are disabled only if discriminatory practices on the part of employers are eliminated. Yet, according to a 1985 survey [11: 8]:
• 47% of non-working or part-time employees with disabilities reported that employers would not recognize that they are capable of performing full-time jobs
• 35% of working-age persons with disabilities reported that employers made accommodations for their disabilities; 61% said that no accommodations were made.
Or consider someone with highly restricted motor movements, who is also unable to speak. An input device sensitive, say, to eye motions, and coupled to a computer with a telephone dialer and voice synthesizer can afford impressive new avenues of communication. Now it becomes possible to order a pizza for home delivery – provided that the person on the other end of the line doesn’t hang up the phone at the first sound of a synthesized voice.
Again, while social contact may be enhanced by computer-driven communication devices, those same devices may open up new possibilities of isolation. Oliver Sacks, in his book, Seeing Voices, reports that, despite immense improvements in life afforded deaf people by TDDs (telecommunication devices for the deaf; formerly teletypewriters, or TTYs), these devices
have a negative side, too. Before they were widely available, fifteen years ago, deaf people went to great lengths to meet each other – they would constantly visit each other’s homes, and would go regularly to their local deaf club. These were the only chances to talk with other deaf people; this constant visiting or meeting at clubs formed vital links which bound the deaf community into a close physical whole. Now, with TTYs (in Japan, faxes are used), there is much less actual visiting among the deaf; deaf clubs are starting to be deserted and empty; and a new, worrying tenuity has set in. It may be that TTYs (and closed captions or signed programs on television) give deaf people the sense of being together in an electronic village – but an electronic village is not a real one, and the downfall of visiting and going to clubs is not readily reversed. [13: 155n]
As a final example, consider some of the benefits that can accrue when people meet and communicate electronically over a computer bulletin board. Long distance relationships can be struck up and maintained, and physical characteristics that might have effectively prevented an initial face-to-face contact are now effectively eliminated. But these benefits also carry certain risks. Lindsay Van Gelder [14] reports how a male New York psychiatrist managed to masquerade for two years as a neurologically impaired woman while participating in a women’s special interest discussion group on CompuServe – engaging in wholesale deception, and violating the trust and confidence of women with whom he interacted.
Obviously, discrimination, isolation, and deception all precede assistive computer technology. Technological development may afford them new modes of expression, but they are at bottom social issues, not technological issues at all. The moral, I hope, is clear. Assistive technology is just that: assistive. Social attitudes and practices need adjustment as well. In this territory there is no technological panacea.
Go to: Some Limitations of Linguistic Reform
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