Collective Margins

activating inclusion within emerging digital landscapes

Digital technologies and tools are neither passive, neutral, or isolated but rather, in design, manufacture, and distribution, are embedded within systems that produce inequalities such as uneven access and agency for users. For the one in five Canadians who identify as living with a disability, the delivery of audio and visual information contributes to limited access to digital technologies and forms of discrimination within digital spaces based on ability1. In response to this reality, coupled with political developments of new accessibility legislation in Canada and the global realities of COVID-19, it is crucial to ensure that digital environments are designed so that people of all abilities can equitably participate, build community, and share knowledge within virtual spaces. Through a digital ethnographic approach, an in-depth and qualitative methodology, this research seeks to garner critical insights into how individual disability activists and their allies are collaborating to develop, improve, and encourage more equitable access and practices within digital environments. As accessibility defines how people interact within digital environments, this ethnographic research will articulate how both design and social practices hinder equitable participation for individuals based on ability while also addressing substantial gaps in institutional practices and current research applications regarding accessible and inclusive movement building. By taking a feminist theoretical orientation and community-based approach to digital ethnography, this project aims to explore the ways that individuals and institutions articulate activism and how their orientation towards disabled individuals and activists influences the ways that people enact activist work and social change within digital and physical environments. This project addresses substantial gaps within accessibility support systems in order to emphasize the importance of shifting the responsibility of access from disabled individuals to collective social structures in such a manner that contributes to more equitable digital spaces and social futures.  

LINK TO THESIS: www.open.library.ubc.ca/soa/cIRcle/collections/ubctheses/24/items/1.0417449?o=0

RESEARCH TEAM

PI: Madelaine Lekei (Master’s Researcher, UBCO)
Supervisor: Fiona P. McDonald, PhD (UBCO)

Committee Members: Karen Nakamura (Anthropology, UC Berkeley)  and Rachelle Hole (Social Work, UBCO)

FUNDED BY

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council

Institute for Community Engaged Research (ICER)

Department of Community, Culture, and Global Studies Richard Garvin Fieldwork Award