There are more than 10 million people live in the United Kingdom with a long-term illness, impairment disability or according to the Office for disability issues (ODI) and even if medical treatment and pre-birth screening has reduced this number dramatically in the last half-century, many of the difficulties for this population has not been altered. Compared with their counterparts in non-disabled people, probably by people with disabilities in this country increasingly are poor and unemployed with fewer qualifications than non-disabled people, more likely to be victims of crime and more likely to experience occupational and social discrimination.
This should have been fixed by the Internet. Put it roughly, there is, of course, no stairs online. If you subscribe to the mythology, which is spun; in the structure internet of technological utopians, should be on the Internet an entirely available resource available to all, where everyone can achieve personal and social self-actualisation despite the barriers that they face offline. It should be the great leveller. It should be, but as always, it is more complicated than that.
In 2003 I launched a MSc in Social Psychology, with all the wide-eyed academic expectations for a baby. I want to prove that the web and specifically online games such as EverQuest and World of Warcraft-could provide benefits to society. If you want to show my hypothesis, I chose to look at the qualitative and holistic experience of persons with severe physical handicap; I interviewed players who had harmed their spinal cords as seriously as they were almost completely paralysed.
My argument was with the right tools, physical disability will be changed in cyberspace; action in order to achieve objectives, rely on their brains rather than on Crouch — makes the natural corpus obsolete – would serve to increase the players ' welfare. In fact, thanks to a number of unusual technical adaptations, my participants be able to play with able-bodied persons, online exercise their psychological identities rather than physical ones, who had a tendency to dominate the social interactions offline.
Two results stood. First offered web personal and physical anonymity of a population, which is experiencing a significant amount of stigma offline. In General, to people like my participants who do not "pass" in real-life situations allows them to experience the web an unlimited freedom. They can interact in a place where there are no barriers to access, single them out. Online interaction disembodied nature gave them a sense of control over how they are perceived and transformed power dynamic that exists offline where a disability is obvious.
The second was the Internet described as a stepping platform, giving your audience the sense that they were responsible for their own destiny. Extend this remark to the broader web, leveling not just in games; Retrieves information, get a posse is an agent for change through whatever means giving each an ego boost and is much more attainable now than it ever has been.
I was satisfied with these results, but surprised at how little research has been done looking at these issues, given the potential social advantage. Almost universally specify the results of the few small studies that have been published in this area that the Internet is an untapped resource for people with disabilities, with the potential to transform the social participation by providing information and networks, which should reduce the adverse effects of social isolation. Based on these, there are countless initiatives to get people with disabilities online, such as the Race Online 2012 and Directgov, and reduce the significant access gap.
This is unfortunately a part of the problem. All of this supports a theory called the social model of disability, which says that the society, which creates barriers for access to and equal opportunities, experience, people with disabilities, rather than the actual disability. It is in other words, architecture, culture and social constraints that exclude people with disabilities from full participation. Clearly, the Internet has become a good place to test this: removing the obvious barriers and evidence heat dispersion happy, functioning members of society. But these obstacles still exist. We still live in the real world.
One of the strongest criticism against the social model is to hide a physical disability or attach non-physical disability clumsiness or inattention, disabled people perpetuate a discriminatory society and strengthen the perception of personal tragedy, inefficacy and stigma. The Internet is the greatest passing platform for all: all is normal online. And so, where to let our attitudes to disability offline?
There have been improvements for people with disabilities in employment, education and participation in cultural activities in the last decade, but the Internet is not the only factor in this change. Not surprisingly, are gaps between disabled and non-disabled people in these areas still substantial; ODI reports that only 48% of people with disabilities are employed, compared with 78% of the non-disabled people.
If the Web's unlimited potential was actually realised, we would expect major changes have taken place in the last 20 years. It seems ironic that a technology that has the potential to empower a group can also be perpetuating divisions.
The Internet has transformed the personal experiences of people with disabilities by creating a rules of play for empowerment with access to information, connections and a platform for change. Nevertheless, we must think of our social attitudes to disability in the offline world rather than to ignore what we don't see online. Only then will the Web's effect on disability will be really clear.
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