Disability and Assistive Technologies for the Orthopedically Challenged: A Sociological Commentary

Abstract

Assistive technologies (AT) are meant to represent opportunity for those with orthopaedic disabilities, but it’s not quite that simple. The potential for mobility and independence that technology has the capacity to offer for persons with orthopaedic disabilities is constantly challenged by the stigmata of society, affordability of devices, the lack of service delivery, and insufficient policies. This commentary examines assistive technologies in a critical, sociological way by drawing on the contrasting concepts of the medical model of disability, social model of disability, and more recently Critical Disability Theory. This article seeks to analyse the accessibility and abandonment of ATs, along with the psychosocial adaptation and cultural ideas of disability. Assistive technologies are social artefacts just as much as they are tools, influenced by political economy, culture, and social power. The article aims to challenge approaches that are charity-based or donor driven, and questions assumptions of inclusion, transitioning to rights-based, user-centred models based on lived experience, of persons with orthopaedic disability, informed by Universal Design.