How We All Became Disabled, but We're Still Not All Connecting

How We All Became Disabled, But We’re Still Not All Connecting

"Stay connected" is what we've been constantly advised in 2020. Those two words assume a level of privilege. They assume everyone has economic access to the technologies we rely on to be connected in the first place. Yet there are still too many people who can’t afford those technologies, and often they are the very people who need them most: seniors and people with disabilities.

This is brought home to me every time I hear that other catchphrase of 2020, “the new normal.” I feel a little guilty saying this, but that phrase still cracks me up. I'm a blind person with a hearing impairment, a compromised autoimmune system due to rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia, and migraines.

So, even before coronavirus, traveling was challenging, and crowds represented the chance of catching something from which it would take weeks or months to recover, worries shared by friends with disabilities. We also share a slightly warped sense of humor, and the joke for 2020 has been, “This new normal looks a lot like my old normal.”

Worrying about how you are going to accomplish everyday tasks? Check. Being stuck at home? Check. Spending large amounts of time on the phone and online trying to get the basic supplies and services you need? Check. Worrying about people who go around as if they don't know the meaning of the word “contagious”? Check.

What does feel different is all the nondisabled people who have suddenly found themselves sharing these same concerns, with many of them slowly beginning to realize what it's like to live with a disability.

About this time of year in 2006, I had recently graduated from MIT after completing a master’s thesis titled "Decloaking Disability: Images of Disability and Technology in Science Fiction Media." In it, I discussed how we can use science fiction stories to learn about cultural attitudes toward both people with disabilities and technology: what do we believe technology should be used for? And how do people with disabilities view what we want technology to do for us?

Looking back, I thought that my focus on disability and technology, being at MIT, and my own experience with writing and blogging and using technologies for people with disabilities gave me some clues into what kind of technologies I would be using in 2020.

I had no idea at all.

I would never have imagined that in one year, Steve Jobs would announce the release of the iPhone, a device which has radically altered the lives of thousands of visually impaired people. Most sighted people have no idea of what a blind person can do with an iPhone. We can send and receive texts (with emojis), take photos and use computer vision to get a description of what’s in the picture, take a picture of a sign, or a menu, or a piece of mail, run it through OCR, and have it read to us. We can surf the net, read an ebook or an audiobook, borrow books from the public library, get step-by-step directions to a destination, play music, podcasts, course lectures, accessible games, and streaming shows, many with audio description. Users can even type and read braille on their iPhones by connecting a portable braille display.

Then there are virtual assistants: Siri on my iPhone and Alexa on my Echo Dot. (They actually get along too well: sometimes they are just responding to each other while totally ignoring me. I think, Yup, this is the singularity). There are also less visible technologies such as machine learning, the cloud and the semantic web, doing the heavy lifting behind the scenes that make all these other technologies possible.

Some of the simplest devices, such as the Amazon Dot, seem pretty affordable: only $25 on (frequent) sale. Amazon will ship it to you for free and their disability helpline will talk you through setting it up.

Yet for many people with disabilities -- including seniors who are experiencing loss of vision, hearing, or mobility -- $25 is not an affordable price. A smartphone is out of reach, let alone the monthly cost of the high-speed Internet service required to use these technologies, if their dwelling even has access to high-speed Internet.

Before we can access a device, we need to be able to afford it. ( continued below cut )