Disability Society and Assistive Technology

<p>The provision of assistive technology is an important individual and collective service of the welfare state. The state plays a significant role towards linking users and products and the matching of devices and users is both a science and an art. However many people feel it is stigmatising to use individually designed assistive technologies as they often in a subtle way convey discriminating barriers in society. A major challenge of assistive technology is thus to reduce social exclusion marginalization and importantly to reduce individual risks and societal costs related to non-use due to deficiencies in usability aesthetics and design of the technologies.</p> <p></p> <p>This groundbreaking book discusses the relationship between society disability and technology by using different empirical examples (e.g. school everyday life) to show why disability studies and STS-studies (society technology and science) are a fruitful approach to understanding and meeting these challenges by exploring the significance of the technologies for users society and the field and by identifying challenges theoretically empirically and practically. This book scrutinises the role of AT devices as well as the organisational structure of the AT market in relation to disabled people's lives.</p> <p></p>