Comment paper for Week 4: The Built Environment as Disabling

French, Sally. (1993). “What’s so great about independence?” (Ch 1.5) in, John Swain, Vic Finkelstein, Sally French and Mike Oliver (eds.). Disabling Barriers - Enabling Environments. London: Sage.

Gleeson, Brendon. (1999). “Can technology overcome the disabling city?” (Ch 5) in Ruth Butler and Hester Parr (eds.). Mind and Body Spaces: Geographies of Illness, Impairment and Disability. New York: Routledge.

Imrie, Rob. (1998). “Oppression, Disability and Access in the Built Environment.” (Ch 9) in Tom Shakespeare (ed.). The Disability Reader: Social Science Perspectives. London: Cassel.

As Sally French’s article states: “the notion of independence can be taken too far, restricting the lives of disabled people rather than enriching them” (French 1993 44). This point can best be exemplified by applying it to the concept of technology. All of these articles complement one another by strengthening each other’s arguments for a more inclusive society while pointing to some ways in which the disabled are overlooked: technology dependence, poorly designed urban cities, including building designs. French points out in Gleeson’s article that “technological aids are a mixed blessing and can become a burden when they are promoted to the exclusion of socio-economic policies for disabled people” (Gleeson 1999 99). Essentially the point here is that anything beneficial is meant to be used in moderation; too much technology interrupts a person’s need for social interaction and therefore hinders interpersonal skills and experiences. While technology is valuable in many instances, it does not correct or improve the systemic roots of ignorance towards disability; it is simply a quick fix.
Furthermore, applying the more commonly used definition of disability as it applies to the social sciences, it is evident that technology actually disables the person who becomes dependent on such things as computers. If “disability refers to the social experiences of people with some form of impairment to a limb, organism or mechanism of the body” (Gleeson 1999 101) then technology is disabling in two ways. First off, it limits the social experiences altogether and secondly it evokes a strong dependency on mechanical aids rather than personal betterment. For me, this does not just apply to disabled people but able bodied individuals as well because an over dependency on technological innovations disables everyone, making them reliant on anything but themselves and their own cognitive abilities.
In terms of the physical layouts of cities, building designs and so forth Gleeson points out that architects obviously “discriminate against disabled people by not accounting for their mobility requirements” (Gleeson 1999 102). Irmie’s article builds on this exact notion as he points out architects building designs are planned and built upon the ideal type of person or the “Modular” (Irmie 1998 137), a very specific type of able bodied citizen. This biased view point further oppresses the disabled and continually reaffirms their impairments while making their lives even more complex without reason, merely out of ignorance. Rather than oppressing them further, we need to be more inclusive in our planning and implementation of public policy and access therein.
Getting back to technology, with the latest state of the art gadgets, tools and techniques it is much more possible to build a more inclusive structure. By inclusive I am inferring that ramps, wider door ways, hand rails and brighter colour schemes should be recognized as necessary. To implement designs which are inclusive to all citizens, able bodied as well as disabled individuals, is not that difficult to implement in this advanced age of technology. Yet, the majority of building designs are aesthetically pleasing due to the great amount of independence and discretion give to the architect involved in the building process. Aesthetics as the primary goal of an architect devalues the importance of humanity as it completely disregards the functionality of a building. Quintessentially, such poor designs which exclude a large group of the population promote the idea of conformity; expecting all to conform to the norm or ideal type disregarding diversity altogether. Uninclusive building designs privatize the issue of disability relegating the roots of the problem within the individual psyche; this clearly demonstrates a blame the victim mentality. Unfortunately, this is a public concern that needs much attention from a wide range of societal factors and institutions to ever combat the issue.
Technology can be interactive and thus acknowledged as beneficial on an individual level. Yet how interactive is technology really? For example a video game is pre programmed, pre configured with only a limited number of possible situations available to the user. Certainly I agree that it evokes a sense of imagination and fantasy which is appealing on some level but this is all mechanically created there is nothing natural about it. How about the loss of sensual pleasures or an appreciation for the natural world? This is lost through immersing oneself completely within a technologically produced environment. Natural is degraded and under valued because it is not as “interactive” as technology; it is not concerned with speed and surplus value. The natural world accepts all people as they are; as individuals there are no real expectations or biases. Concepts of normal and ideal exist because of the emergence of capitalist society. Productivity and efficiency are values which are celebrated by a fast paced, mechanically led society rather than a celebration of diversity and uniqueness among humanity.