Fostering accessible technology and sculpting an inclusive market through regulation

Technology has attracted an increasing level of attention within disability studies. Even though an ambivalent attitude towards technological innovation still remains (Sheldon 2003; Macdonald and Clayton 2013), several scholars appreciate that advances in technology have enabled more persons with disabilities than ever before to actively participate in society (Halvorsen 2010; Blanck 2014; Giannoumis 2014). Disability studies’ scepticism towards technology derives from the fear that technology becomes another way to ‘fix’ impairments, perpetuating and reinforcing the outdated medical approach to disability, which identified disability with impaired invalid bodies that needed to be cured, helped, assisted, ‘supplemented’ (ex pluribus Barnes and Mercer 2010; Oliver and Barnes 2012). In addition, some scholars see technology as another impairing barrier, rather than a facilitator or a tool to overcome existing obstacles (Jaeger 2013; Blanck 2014). Goggin and Newell (2003, 131 ff.), for example, affirm that digital technologies, have created a system of exclusion, further isolating people with disabilities