Gerard Goggin seminar for Dyson School of Design Engineering Imperial College London 7 June 2022

1. Disability, Emerging Tech
& Inclusive Design
at the Crossroads
Seminar for Dyson School of Design Engineering
Imperial College London
7 June 2022
Gerard Goggin
Wee Kim Wee School of Information & Communication
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

2. argument
• In this talk, I draw on work-in-progress to suggest that
we are at a crossroads in inclusive design, disability &
emerging technology
• there has been significant progress across various
fronts – partly due to technology (& social)
development & innovation, but also due to greater
understanding of requirements of people with
disabilities
• There has also been notable advances in seeing
disability as a plus – generative area – for design &
technology generally
• However, there remains a long way to go

3. Context for talk
• Talk draws on current book project with Kuansong Victor Zhuang
studying disability across emerging technologies internationally –
with case studies such as digital inclusion & smart cities, mobile,
Internet & social media, connected cars & mobilities, AI
• I am a non-disabled researcher, working in humanities & social
sciences – background of advocacy & policy work & collaborations
on disability & technology from early 1990s onwards
• my research is located at intersection of communication studies &
disability studies
• Two broad strands of work
• Mobile technology - e.g. books on Apps (2021), Location Technologies in
International Context (2020, Global Mobile Media (2011), Cell Phone
Culture (2006)
• Disability & technology – e.g Routledge Companion to Disability & Media
(2020), Digital Disability (2003)
• various other projects on disability – automated decision making;
disability & contemporary digital inclusion; disability & AI bias

4. Contemporary disability & society
• social transformations associated with disability
• acknowledgement of disability as part of diversity
and inclusion agenda
• rise of disability rights (2006 UN Convention on the
Rights of Persons with Disabilities - CRPD) +
disability justice + democracy
• globally there remains stark inequality &
discrimination & violation of rights of disabled
people
• & many contradictions in inclusion &
representation of disabled people – as case of sport
reveals

7. Contemporary disability & society
- tech
• expansion & sophistication of work on disability,
technology & design
• In principle consensus that people with disabilities will
participate in equal basis in digital society -- & a shared
sense that this will be transformative (cf. human rights
to technology in 2006 CRPD)
• BUT lack of detailed or widely understood sense what
this will involve
• Despite potential benefits people with disabilities
experience significant digital inequality & lack of digital
inclusion – as experiences of COVID-19 pandemic
underscore

10. disability & COVID-19 pandemic
• Many disabled people noted that participating in work &
education via digital technologies (e.g. Zoom) became
acceptable – whereas previously they had struggled for this to
be a norm – gains pioneered by disabled people benefitting
also?
• Greater awareness of importance of accessible & inclusive
information, communication & technology
• In other ways barriers to inclusive communication &
participation increased – loss of full range of communication
(especially in person-to-person), spatial confinement, use of
COVID apps to regulate/constrain mobilities
• Increase in/worsening psycho-social impairments (including
mental health concerns)
• Impairment from COVID, including long COVID
G. Goggin & K. Ellis, “Disability, communication and and life itself in the COVID-19 pandemic.” Health
Sociology Review 2020
& “Disability and COVID-19 Communication.” In Communicating COVID-19: Interdisciplinary perspectives
(2021)

11. disability & design
• Rise of disability as significant & generative area of
technology & design
• For instance, in engineering there is notable work
explicitly related to disabled persons
• Prosthetic hands
• Speech & communication disabilities
• Enhancing hearing
• Assistive technology
• Improving accessibility
• also working implicitly concerning disabled people
• Digital health & wellbeing
• Systems for social & welfare services & support

12. Work of Graeme Pullin

13. UCL Global
Disability
Innovation
Hub

14. Work of
Sara
Hendren
Disability & ability are also
produced by ‘relative flexibility
or rigidity of the built world’ (&
digital world);
disability results when ‘shape
of the world … operates
rigidly’– versus adaptation
‘aggregative fallacy’ – problem
of ‘normal’

15. Jutta Treviranus’s 3 dimensions of inclusive design
1. Recognize, respect, and design for human
uniqueness and variability.
2. Use inclusive, open & transparent processes, and
co-design with people who have a diversity of
perspectives, including people that can’t use or have
difficulty using the current designs.
3. Realize that you are designing in a complex
adaptive system

16. Crip Technoscience Manifesto (2019)
Aimi Hamraie & Kelly Fritsch
‘Disabled people are experts and designers of
everyday life … Accessible futures require our
interdependence.
We center technoscientific activism and critical
design practices rooted in disability justice,
collective access, and collective transformation
toward more socially just disability relations.
We call for activists, scholars, and makers to
expand possible futures for disabled people.’

17. Disability & tech at crossroads:
fascinating case of Singapore
• In past 2 years, Kuansong Victor Zhuang & I have been
studying Singapore
• headline ‘smart nation’ policy & well known internationally
for many initiatives on technology
• Singapore puts inclusion & advancement for its citizens at
the heart of its policy & plans – as it seeks to keep itself at
the foreground of developing the phase of digital economy
• Singapore also very interesting because disability is not
principally approached via ‘rights’ lens
• nor in Singapore is there an equivalent of general disability
rights, justice, or equal legislation such as UK Equality Act or
US Americans with Disability Act or Australian Disability
Discrimination Act – each with specific technology
provisions
See: Goggin & Zhuang. “Disability as Smart Equality: Inclusive Technology in a
Digitally Advanced Nation.” In Vulnerable People and Digital Inclusion (20220

18. Case study 1: mobiles
• Mobile phones, especially smartphones, have
emerged as a highly important technology for
disabled people – often hailed as a ‘gamechanger’
• Apps have expanded the range of accessible and
inclusion options but also can be associated with
new barriers – as COVID-19 pandemic revealed

20. Gov
tech –
digital
design

21. SingPass – accessibility efforts
‘SingPass Mobile
SingPass Mobile is a mobile app that is designed to make transacting with
government and businesses faster and easier for all SingPass users.
• What has the team done to make the app inclusive?
• Using QR Login, users can scan a QR code and verify their identity with
biometrics or a 6-digit pin code. This helps users with dexterity issues
transact with ease and reduces the need to remember long passwords.
• Shortcuts to commonly used services within the app ensures no
mistyping of URLs when visiting different government digital services
• The team also enabled high contrast for improved legibility and
readability when using the app
• SafeEntry(www.safeentry.gov.sg) features in the app was developed
with accessibility in mind, and tested extensively with VoiceOver and
Voice Control for the visually and physically handicapped respectively’
GovTech, ‘We Build for Everyone’

26. ‘… so-called
TraceTogether tokens
are an alternative to the
government's contact
tracing smartphone app.
They are aimed at
people who do not own
or prefer not to use a
mobile phone.
The first batch of the
devices are being
distributed to
vulnerable elderly
people who have little
or no family support or
have mobility problems.’
BBC News, June 2020

27. Case study 2: driverless cars – where
do they fit into disability mobilities?

29. Green Man +
‘Green Man+ allocates a longer green man time for the elderly and Persons with
Disabilities (PWD). Elderly pedestrians and PWD can expect up to 13 seconds more
green man time when they make use of signalised pedestrian crossings fitted with
Green Man+.
They simply need to tap their CEPAS-compliant senior citizen concession card or PWD
concession card on the reader mounted above the standard push-button on the traffic
light pole to extend green man time by between 3 and 13 seconds, depending on the
width of the crossings.’
Singapore Land Transport Authority, ‘Green Man +’

34. G. Goggin, & K. V. Zhuang, ‘Disability
and Micromobilities in an Asian
Communicative City’ (2022)
How do actors
designing urban
mobilities engage with
and account for
disabled peoples’
contemporary
mobilities – and how
their everyday
practices fit into
plans/evolving
systems for cars,
public transport &
micro-mobilities?

35. challenges
• persistence of overarching, disabling ways that disability is
approached;
• slow progress in taking up approaches such as co- and
participatory design
• sub-optimal policy frameworks and innovation eco-systems
• puzzle of how to understand and better connect technology
and inclusive design efforts with disability across a range of
other groups
• Opportunity/need to experiment with education in design,
communication, technology – how can we teach
contemporary disability & inclusive/responsible design? &
help embed into key sites in the wider tech/social
ecosystem?