Reflections on Ableism in Participatory Technology Design

Abstract

Participatory efforts to design technology for disabled people often involve a range of stakeholders, but we rarely pause to question how perspectives and views of the different people involved in those processes - including negative or incorrect perceptions of disability - influence our work. In this paper, we explore how ableism, i.e., discrimination based on normative bodily assumptions mostly affecting disabled people, impacted our research projects, and outline challenges for our research communities moving forward.