Technology and the disabled condition

This is a copy of a lecture I gave at the University of Ontario Institute of technology's faculty of education. Hope you enjoy it:
.I thought it would be beneficial for us to consider technology’s etymology, since it is important for my particular understanding of the word and how I’m going to use it in my talk today. Derived from the Greek texh/-h=j lo/goj-ou (skill/art & word/logic... etc.), for me technology is nothing more then the application of human skill in creation. This is important because often we view technology as some impersonal and unchanging entity, out of which we construct our lives. However much we may be aware that technology is changing every day – and however much we may interact with it – without fail sometimes it feels as though no human could have created the devices we use; for to have an accurate understanding of every piece of technology we use on a daily basis, is beyond most persons. This can often lead to ignorance concerning how much technology we use-and even more so-the way in which we use it. In some ways this is completely necessary.
If you accept my definition of technology, then you are using it every time you brush your teeth, every time you eat, every time you go to bed, and not just every time you check your e-mail, Facebook account, or put together a power point presentation for your students or coworkers. So each person, whether she is a subsistence farmer, who uses solar panels, or a wheelchair user, who requires a ventilator to live, is to varying degrees dependent on technology. Yet what people do not wish to realize, is that there is not as great a difference in dependency level upon technology, between the wheelchair user, and a subsistence farmer. It goes without saying that there would be great death without technology, but let’s stop and think. Suppose those solar panels of the subsistence farmer broke. Even if she had the required technical knowledge to fix them, it is doubtful whether she would have the requisite material, made possible by international trade, which requires airplanes, at her disposal. And even if, say, she decided to become a hunter and forage for food, that would still require technologies and dependence on other human being" We can, therefore understand how technology can change the way that we perceive our environment, on a day-to-day level, but also how it can change our notions, of time space, each other & and what it means to be human. One need only think of the paradigm shifts that occurred after the publication of Einstein's theory of special relativity and the discovery of the double helix by Watson and Crick..
Tom Darby, a leading philosopher of technology, in his book, The Feast: Meditations on goes so far as to postulate that society can be classified into different historical periods. It is possible to trace social trends, through the different overarching metaphors which organize society. Darby states that the last of these overarching metaphors is technology; technology not only weakens our sense of the divine, it becomes the new divine.² This is an intriguing hypothesis, though it makes me rather uncomfortable. It is commonplace, however, to assert that bourgeoisie virtues have largely become the chief societal values and that these views are obviously connected to, though not solely caused by technological development. They condemned a middle-class public sphere has a very different idea of what constitutes a good life than , for example, Aristotle did in his ethics ³.
politics and Time
I would also like to add to this thought by considering Julia Kristeva, whose thoughts on abjection are particularly elucidating, when it comes to technology, and I believe even more so when it comes to disability. Her theory of abjection states that patriarchy seeks to remove anything that reminds us of the womb, for though this gives life, it also reminds us of the undifferentiated ego state between mother and child, and subsequently, a conflict develops between the generative power of the womb and the fear of dissolution⁴. Thus, death, decay, and all the things we’ve come to associate with these processes become abject. Technology can often provide distance from these processes, and because technology is one of the primary means through which we buffer our contact with abjection, its association with liberation is very strong. It is one of the ways some seek to transcend death. To grasp the idea that technology
and the arts are means by which we attempt to transcend death, you may think of things such as Beethoven’s fifth Symphony, the Empire State building, the cloning debates, the metaphysical poets, the painting "the scream ",and so on [explain?–SRT]
I hope my off-topic example has established two basic principles. Every human being is dependent upon technology, whether we like it or not, & we are dependent on other persons for survival. The danger of increased technological development, is that it often creates considerable tension between individualism, as anonymity rises, and economic & social interdependence. (Ponder Facebook).. Without going down the dark road that comes from propounding an idyllic Heideggerian pastoralism,⁵ I think it’s safe to have some reservations about technology, while acknowledging its pivotal role in the social emancipation of not just minorities, but all.
If you’ll bear with me, I would like to return to a further point of etymology; for I think it is crucial to our discussion. The word logos can also mean narrative, argument, logic and/or discourse. For me, this is an important concept when one tries to think about technologies’ relation to equity: in Euro-American discourse – possibly more than ever before – and technology, language & thought are inextricable. In a post-Foucault world, it has become commonplace that language – if not the constituted element of reality, is at least one of its principal constituents. It has also become common to question the existence of an ontologically permanent self. Through perception, the subject is constantly defining his reality, and perception in turn, defines the subject⁶. This perceptual process eventually creates paradigms, which though artificial come to be models of and models for reality. Ideology, therefore, becomes our world.. The position that a clear distinction between the perceiver and objects is untenable, is obviously not new, and I apologize for my hackneyed summary here, but perhaps these much discussed concepts serve us better as a model for understanding disability than as tools for producing yet another analysis, of say Shakespeare’s The Tempest.
So I’m going to now spend some time unpacking the most basic thing I use, since an analysis of my wheelchair is crucial to the discussion of all the other exciting technology, about which educators love to hear. To my point about language I would add to and reiterate the fact that space constitutes reality. This seems obvious to most, yet it goes unexamined because the majority of persons share a similar set of spatial parameters which governs how they interact with the world.
Simply put, I don’t. Because of the technology society has devised in order to ameliorate my disability, I sit for the majority of the day. If perception as I’ve said is tied to identity, as it continuously creates a self reinforcing model for reality, then technology creates my world, as it does yours. This may seem like a bad continuation of the matrix trilogy (and for the record I’m not a complete subjective idealist) but it’s not as far-fetched as it seems. The dimensions of my chair make it such that, my gaze is often lower than the average person; there is also a greater amount of space between me and other persons. I do not have the same ability to move within my environment. For instance, I cannot sidestep, squat down, climb, or touch as many objects. In fact, not surprisingly my impaired movement, and lack of tactile stimulation no doubt contributed to my visuospatial learning disability and vice versa exceptionalities in other areas. So technology combined with damage to my motor cortex, created parts of the person you see here. I don’t know the extent to which this is true, but I imagine how I may’ve been different, had society devised different technological responses to my disability, or none at all. I’m put in mind of some futuristic self-supporting segued device. I’ve said this without malice or judgment, but almost everyone in the audience, including myself, would have a different perception of me if I were standing- what is more- if I were sitting in a manual wheelchair instead of a power one I would perceive you all differently, as well. This is not only because of the power of space and place, but also because of the "universe shaping force" of signification⁷.
By now we are all familiar with the idea that certain signs, objects or words, connote a constellation of ideas, which often participate with – though sometimes they can be in opposition to – the larger hegemonic narrative. Individual persons in this taxonomic process are grouped together under associated symbols. Because persons with physical disabilities are understandably linked with the technological developments designed to ameliorate their lives, our symbol is naturally the blue wheelchair. When people want to signify "disabled friendly space" and all that that entails the wheelchair sign validates that particular object or area, by associating it with a class of people. But the particular use of the wheelchair, while I’m unable to devise a better symbol, provides insight into an interesting fact. I would venture to say that no other minority groups is as associated with technology as persons with disabilities. Usually, a group chooses its own particular symbol that is supposed to represent abstract ideals within that community, take for example The Rainbow Flag, a sign which represents the diversity and freedom which the GLBTQ community espouses. Yet persons with disabilities are one of the few –dare I say only? – Minority group(s) associated with a technological symbol. Let’s examine how absurd this practical process really is. I have not yet seen little red men doing jumping jacks to designate every non-accessible area. I suppose if that were the case, we’d get sick of seeing these amusingly chipper figures everywhere, the assumption being, of course, that the world is accessible save for those unfortunate few confined to blue areas designed to facilitate their blue devices. This is partly because the main symbol of accessibility are our stairs, which kind of speak for themselves. Most of us don’t like to admit that except for the advances made in global design architecture and civil planning society’s response to disability is appallingly halfhearted, and I think this is partly to do with misconceptions surrounding technology and equity.
Indeed, our very identity is often discursively fused with it. It seems obvious why this may happen, and I’m not positing a solution, but I think such assumptions warrant more scrutiny than they receive, before one can address adaptive technology in the classroom. Often people viewed the wheelchair as a kind of inseparable appendage. This is expressed quite insidiously as a comparison between it and my legs. The wheelchair is not my legs. I have legs; they simply do not have average function. Still worse, the wheelchair can be something I am "in" as opposed to something I use. The word "in" is a watered down synonym for words such as "bound" or "confined" and carries with it the same ideology predicated on a medical/moral model of disability.
Admittedly, I would be in a bad way, without an electric wheelchair. Yet let’s examine how erroneous & perfidious this phrase is, by way of analogy, modern society would collapse without some form of propulsion which far exceeds the speed capable of being achieved by humans. What is more someone who, for example, operates a truck as an occupation, probably spends more hours in their vehicle – on certain days –than I do in my chair. Yet when referring to this person outside the context of her occupation it would be absurd to say the woman "in" the truck. I have no problem when it’s purely a visual descriptor, but all throughout high school I was known as the student in the wheelchair. Technology becomes a vehicle of confinement, rather then emancipation. One more point: no one would consider it a disability to not be able to run at 129 kph. Technology, therefore, sometimes while seeming to have an ameliorating quality actually abrogates the freedom of persons with disabilities. This is so because of social discourses, that designate certain technologies, not in the category of things to be used, but as objects, which can – perhaps even should -- define one’s being.
And now we come to the crux of my argument, and why I think the Hegelian teleology which still creeps the strongholds of Euro-American liberalism (i.e. the Ontario curriculum) is at once, fallacious, limiting, and frankly downright dangerous. The reason technology is inseparable from persons who have disabilities is the assumption that technology is the primary means toward our participation as full citizens. As society progresses, therefore and technology develops, "our condition" will continually improve until we reach a point where technology will make disability irrelevant.⁸ This is why I mentioned the theory of abjection’s relation to technology. If a person is operating under a medical or moral model of disability, then it will be inevitably associated with the abject. Imperfection of any kind – under this model – recalls the frailty of our condition. Under this supposition, which is more frequent than we would care to acknowledge, when persons confront disabilities, they are – on some level – confronting death. And, of course enter technology
I hope that most of you realize that this is really stupid, but this view is highly prevalent and insidious,. An actual argument I had with the team leader of the supported living unit, in which I reside, started when he made the moronic comment "you know because you have all this technology and accessibility it’s like you’re not even disabled." Let’s suppose for a moment disability is solely dependent on physical function – a dubious assertion at best – no conceivable device could ever replace walking; no implant can yet replace hearing; no seeing-eye dog can replace sight. "Disability" may engender exceptional abilities, not possessed by the majority, but it is foolish to think that technology alone can provide equity or indeed, absolute equity in every circumstance is ever achievable between two persons, whether they have a disability or not, whether they use technology or not. As well, this assumes that "a condition" is in constant need of amelioration.
Too often, persons look at others and think that they are not pleased with their circumstances, without actually asking them. This can also work in reverse; someone could assume that because of technology or accommodation, a person is happy in their circumstance when they may not be. This also assumes that all adversity is necessarily bad. I tend to take Nietzsche’s position that "suffering" provides meaning and build strength of character⁹. Ask your students/staff members how technology can best help them. They just may be getting along fine the way things are; without open communication you won’t really know. I can’t tell you how many times I was forced to use a piece of software or device that did not help me help me.
Yet other people had other ideas. While we are on the subject of Nietzsche, I find there arises a very dangerous stereotype of the Uber gimp, who uses technology, like some sort of elevated sideboard, in order to overcome his disability. When I first got speech recognition software, this led some to the conclusion that my accommodations should be reduced, because they overestimated the ameliorating affects (spelled by Dragon with an ‘a’ by the way) of technology.
The greatest barrier and liberating force when it comes to education in your classroom is not how furniture is arranged, or the lack of access to services, the barriers start with you; but they can also began to collapse with you. As my friend and fellow activist, Edward Ndopu says, there is a difference between legal provision for disability in education, i.e. persons with disabilities have the right to the same education as all other students and substantive recognition, which takes active steps to make these general precepts an actual reality. What we need is the "institutionalization of inclusion", not simply the modification of existing structures. ¹⁰ If the system doesn’t work ,and modifying it is no longer practical ,then change the system! It may help to think of social discourses as a form of technology: we use them to construct and understand our world ,and sometimes bureaucracy &discourses may even be helpful. The problem arises when we don’t realize why a discourse was created in the first place. Since these metaphorical tools become so entrenched, they eventually create us, even though it is we who create them..

My somewhat idealistic views find best expression in the work of Louis A., whose theory is difficult to summarize, which is why I’m indebted to another colleague, Justin Campbell, for his conversation, and elegant synopsis: One explanation for the ongoing power differentials within society can be found in the ideas of Louis Althusser, who saw the state as a product, rather than a direct determinant, of a society’s dominant power relations. While it is true that the state unquestionably wields great power, its formal institutions, including for instance the police, the military, the courts – what Althusser collectively labelled the "Repressive State Apparatus" (RSA) – do not determine for themselves in what way they will function coercively. The real source of power, then, lies in a society’s common ideas about itself. These are organized by the informal non-state institutions, such as schools, churches, businesses, families, etc., which together constitute the various "Ideological State Apparatuses" (ISA). It is by means of the ISA that popular consent for the status quo is secured on behalf of the powerful by advancing specific ways in which a society’s members implicitly and, therefore, uncritically, "construct" not simply their own understandings of their place within it, not merely their relationships to one another, but above all, and most importantly, their own constructions of themselves. The "class struggle" is thus firmly located within ideology. It is a battle, necessarily, because the single common element among all ideologies, regardless of the infinite possibilities for differences in content, is that they dominate and, through that dominance, ensure their own reproduction. While Althusser’s overt Marxism may seem somewhat dated by present standards, the general framework of his analysis nevertheless holds: that "common sense" is perhaps the most powerful force in politics, that it shapes the way we see ourselves, that it delineates our social interactions, and that the relationships of power that are established by those interactions are inherently reproductive.¹¹" Why I have spent so much time talking to teachers is partly an accident, but it’s also because I believe that educators are one of the primary agents of social change. It is with you that education starts, and sadly, it is with you that learning can end. The Ontario curriculum poses interesting challenges for educators. These challenges are mainly born of the tension between individual educational goals, and instructional ideals predicated upon loads of philosophical principles. I’m sorry to say that, in my experience, educators often focus on a specific criterion, that I had to meet, rather than the overarching goals of the education system. In his doctoral dissertation one of my current professors, Geoffrey Kellow, suggests that one of the ways of holding onto "a Western educational tradition", and the face of multiculturalism and increased technological development, is to focus on its principal aim and that means by which it achieves this goal, as opposed to its specific content^{12. This aim is of course to gradually turn the students reason toward knowledge, it has been postulated at least since Plato’s Republic13}, especially in the allegory of the cave.. Yet this is slightly more complicated, since the tenants of liberal democracy suggests that it is the job of the state to create an environment in which the individual is free to pursue her desires¹⁴. It is not the task of the state, in opposition to classical models of government, to inculcate virtue into its citizens. Classical thought saw politics As "the art whose business is to take care of men's souls.¹⁵ Nevertheless, liberalism espouses the vndividual person as the best judge of morality.Yet the question arises: how can society function without a polity educated in civic virtue? One answer is obviously through education, and teachers are, in a manner of speaking, the custodians of public virtue; for you shaped the minds of the future. Consequently , I’m intrigued by my current project on Thomas Jefferson’s conception of education; for he believed the primary purpose of education was to create a citizenry that was able to assess its government.. The goal of the curriculum, therefore, is & should be to create successful politically aware citizens, who love learning. Yet it is challenging to deal with the competing needs of students
In any case, the education system brings to the fore an ongoing debate in modern Canadian life, which Charles Taylor offers an excellent commentary on in his book, Multiculturalism and the "Politics of Recognition" He Argues for Special Recognition, rather than simply formal acknowledgment, saying the best model of liberal society is one which is "grounded very much on judgements about what makes a good life – judgements in which the integrity of cultures has an important place ". Yet, this necessitates an ongoing negotiation between: - liberalism (neutral) vs communitarianism (incl. common idea of "good life") - "procedural" commitment vs "substantial" commitment - individual rights vs collective goals - complete equality vs recognition of difference (special rights and (equal rights for everyone) restrictions for "special" citizens)¹⁶
By now you may be asking, what does my long rant have to do with technology in the classroom, or why I haven’t mentioned any specific devices/programs I use, other than my wheelchair. I did this for two reasons: firstly, I thought it would be better to address any specific questions you may have after or during my talk; secondly, there’s not much to say other than I use a speech recognition program, and a screen reading program. Dragon NaturallySpeaking is an excellent program, and it keeps improving. Nevertheless, it will always make mistakes. In fact, that very sentence I just wrote, required several corrections. It took me hours to write this, not including editing. Without the substantive recognition I have argued for, technology simply becomes another barrier, rather than the tool through which one achieves a measure of liberation. I also use a recording device, and I have difficulty reading overheads, so I prefer PowerPoint presentation. All these things may seem small, but they all require a more open and engaging classroom. This classroom must not only be changed physically, but every day as an educator you should strive to remove those psychological barriers, which at times are far more impenetrable.
As helpful as power points can be, there is still that one teacher, who believes that her love of overheads, or simple laziness outweighs the joy I experience when I am able to access knowledge. If a person gets as much joy from overheads as I do from Jon Donne, there is something seriously wrong with them. Routinely with technology, the caveat is raised "how will this help us meet the expectations as outlined in the Ontario curriculum. This comment suggests that Dalton McGuinty’s approval is the sine qua non for the learning of our youth, when he is much closer to a Thrasymachus than a philosopher king. In any case I surpassed their curriculum time and time again, and I still heard that refrain. While we’re on the subject of peoples ridiculous perceptions, based on the curriculum & accommodation I was French exempt, and I now have three years of Latin, and I am in ancient Greek. — sic curriculum supreavi. A practical example: writing bibliographies with Dragon NaturallySpeaking is difficult and exhausting. Because I have problems with breath support, typing every punctuation mark and formatting every entry is labourious. Thankfully there are several programs which will do this, but I still had teachers marking me down for ridiculous errors in my work. They did this even though they were clearly not part of my original thought, and did not reflect the caliber of my writing. Their rationale was that in university professors would expect precision. I have never been marked down for a bibliography by a professor, since I have never submitted a paper for publication, they cared more about my ideas than whether I forgot a period at the end of my citation; and three most of them use nota bene anyway, a program combining word processing and automatic citation , making this whole process – which I cried over in school --irrelevant. I can’t imagine the challenges educators face daily .but you must not become obsessed with bureaucratic perfection, lest you should forget education’s original intention. All these things dampened my desire to know. Though if we are to believe Thomas Jefferson , it did educate me in civic virtue ,insofar as I desired to become politically active , so that I could critique the McGinty/ Harris government’s alarming vision for education.
The same types of things occur with screen reading software. Sometimes electronic formats of books don’t have proper page numbers, or they get cut off, or it’s impossible to locate one edition. Even though they had read the material dozens of times, most of my high school teachers insisted on page numbers. We can, therefore, see how technology while it appears to ameliorate the condition persons with disabilities can also provide new and unforeseen impediments, if it is not supported by a paradigm shift in how we view education. This shift necessitates that we re-examine education’s original goals and reenvision its original structures.. If technology is merely imposed on an existing oppressive superstructure, the structure does not change; indeed, the apparatus merely becomes a more effective oppressive ideology. I hope my brief excurses into 70s Marxist theory demonstrated this.
Without question, I love technology, and it’s very liberating. There’s no way I’d be here without it. Yet accessibility is merely the creation of of environments in which technology can function. Creating a wheelchair accessible classroom, is not the same as creating an environment that is accepting to persons with disabilities. I hope I have also shown that we should be aware that while technology is positive, it often comes to define our identity in many ways. And to say that I use a wheelchair or voice recognition software, and you use your car or your hands to type is not a question of ontology, though it often becomes this, but a matter of diversity and degree. This does not mean, as one of the strongest bastions of liberal abelism on some would claim that "we all in some way disabled"; for society someone arbitrarily determines what abilities/characteristics are classificatory. What is considered mundane technology, e.g. a tooth brush and what can become what I have called ontologically constitutive technology i.e. a wheelchair is solely dependent on perception. As I hope I’ve shown this perception is not to be taken lightly, since it ultimately shapes and defines the universes that we inhabit and how we function together.
I cannot offer any sort of global solutions to these systemic problems; it is merely my hope that if technology is the rational application of art than you will use it to mould a better world for your students rather than disguised new forms of oppression. Freedom for your students starts with you, not with a computer.