Walking and Talking, Rocking and Rolling: Moral Visibility in Contexts of Technology Development

Abstract

Many technologies that are purportedly developed to improve the lives of disabled people reflect an ableist ideology that devalues rather than supports disabled bodyminds. In this paper we attribute this tendency to a neurotypical form of perception that obscures disabled people’s moral visibility, understood as their visibility as richly expressive and interaction-worthy sensemaking individuals. Relying heavily on examples drawn from scholarship on and community with augmentative and alternative communication technology (AAC tech)—that is, communication technology designed for and used by nonspeaking people—we take the expressive bodies and voices of disabled people as well as technology’s role in forming expressivity and voice as important loci for redressing neurotypical ableist perceptions widely embedded in practices of engineering and science. Through our AAC tech discussion, we map different modes and degrees of moral (in)visibility, offering this mapping as an analytic resource for technologists committed to anti-ableist technology. Additionally, we also trace how technologies can be used and tinkered with in ways that can open up more (neuro)expansive, diversity-embracing ways of perceiving disabled lives. Ultimately, our account aims to motivate technologists to embrace such an expansive approach. We conclude by tentatively indicating some ways in which this approach can be operationalized in engineering and science practices.