Comment Paper for Week 4

French, Sally. (1993). What’s so great about independence? In J. Swain, V. Finkelstein,
S. French and M. Oliver (Eds.), Disabling Barriers: Enabling Environments. (pp.
44-48). London: Sage.
Gleeson, Brendon. (1999). Can Technology Overcome the Disabling City? In R. Butler
and H.Parr (Eds.), Mind and Body Spaces: Geographies of Illness, Impairment
and Disability. (pp. 98-118). New York: Routledge.
Imrie, Rob. (1998). Oppression, Disability and Access in the Built Environment. In T.
Shakespeare (Ed.), The Disability Reader: Social Science Perspectives. (pp. 129-
146). London: Cassell.

Independence is usually viewed as being a great and wonderful thing that everyone is suppose to want to have, right? Well that is the case for some of us, but not for everyone. Sally French and Brendan Gleeson discuss how it is the belief of the able-bodied that disabled people want to be independent and that technology helps disabled people to be more independent, and in a way fixes them. Rob Imrie on the other hand discusses disability as a form of oppression in society caused by the structural environment around us. All articles lead to the idea of disability being seen as oppression.
Sally French and Brendan Gleeson both have written about disabled people being fixed and becoming independent due to technology. French, who has a disability says that she “believes that the notion of independence can be taken too far, restricting the lives of disabled people rather than enriching them.” (French 1993: 44) It is my belief that technology has been put into place to help the able-bodied more than the disabled. It is restricting disabled people and causing them to actually take more time to do things. It is a way of the able-bodied to try to make disabled people seem normal by doing things for themselves. French states that “Shearer and Sutherland believe that to insist on independence is a form of oppression. It individualizes disability rather than viewing it in social terms.” (French 1993: 45) The forms of oppression that are referred to here are marginalization and powerlessness. When trying to make disabled people independent, it is not taking them into consideration in the running of society, or not allowing them to have control over the conditions of their own life. It is just not possible for a disabled person to do absolutely everything on their own. They may be able to, but it could take them hours. There is this pressure put on everyone for the disabled to become independent so that they fit into the norm, as seen by the able-bodied.
In Gleeson’s article he discusses how technology is going to be the cause of helping disabled people become more independent. He talks about this independence based on technology as being both a good thing and a bad thing. Gleeson states in his article that “techno-enthusiasts have proclaimed that new aids and inclusive designs will progressively ‘correct’ for physical impairments and thereby turn the disabled person into a ‘normal’ citizen or worker.” (Gleeson 1999: 98) The able-bodied are concerned with trying to make disabled people part of the norm, rather than trying to actually help them. I believe that there are many devices of technology that do help disabled people become more independent, such as driving sticks for the people in wheelchairs, but technology being used to help disabled people become independent can also be a bad thing and cause them to be oppressed by not taking into account the people with the physical impairments when it was designed or built. Gleeson states that “technologies often disadvantage disabled people by requiring high levels of education, technical skills, self confidence, and in many cases physical dexterity.” In my opinion technology, to an extent makes disabled people more disabled, because when it is taken into consideration what to build and where to build it, it is looked at from an able-bodied perspective instead of a disabled perspective. Therefore, things are not made to benefit the disabled, but rather to benefit the able-bodied, although it may look like the disabled are being taken into consideration.
In Imrie’s article his discussion is more on how the built physical environment has come into play to associate disabled people with oppression. He discusses how the environment is built, based on only thinking about the able-bodied. Imrie talks about buildings and equipment being built “premised upon the idea that human behaviour was wholly predictable and knowable, the human beings conformed to a type, to particular patterns of (able-bodied) normality in both bodily and mental terms.” The emphasis here is on sameness, and the normal and this is what environments are built on the basis of. No wonder it is that disabled people are viewed so different, because they are not able to fit in even if they wanted to. Disabled people are seen as being different and able-bodied individuals do not want to be seen as being associated with different. Imrie uses a good example in his article to help illustrate this. A building was built, but at the time of building the front doors they were not accessible for disabled people and instead of making the front doors accessible they decided to make side doors for the disabled to use. This is how disabled people become oppressed through marginalization and not being treated as a member in society. It is as though disabled people have no control over the conditions of their life.
It is clear that disabled people are viewed by the able-bodied as wanting to be independent, but that throughout the process of disabled people trying to become independent they are oppressed, by not having their opinions or attitudes toward their life taken into consideration. Sally French, Brendan Gleeson, and Rob Imrie have all expressed ways in which disabled people become oppressed through independence, through technology, and through their environments. Disabled people are not seen as normal so it is the able-bodied that believe they know what is best for the disabled, even though it may only cause them to become more disabled.