Bringing your Whole Self to Work and the Limits of Assistive Technology
Gabril Hoskin, assistive technology tutor, explores the potential of anthropology to increase accessibility and inclusion.
Late 2022, in an article entitled ‘Bringing Your Whole Self to Work’, consumer editor and lifestyle journalist Heidi Scrimgeour proposed that assistive technology (AT) opens the door to ensure employees have a voice in an ‘authentic’ workspace. As an AT tutor with a social enterprise supporting university students with disabilities, I see an appetite to create such spaces on a daily basis. It’s not just work colleagues who seek a stake in a credible enterprise: many of my students express a sense of alienation from the university system due to that system’s lack of accessibility. However, I question the extent to which technology can promote inclusion and visibility; the big data called on by tech developers (and, indeed by numerous service providers, universities included) is not sufficient to address the complex needs of disabled ‘users’.
My background is in anthropology, a discipline that leaps on any mention of the ‘A Word’ -Authenticity. What makes something ‘authentic’? Why might people desire this? Are there things and people who are ‘unauthentic’? How are such predicaments expressed in behaviour? In an article exploring ethnography and disability studies, Monica Casper and Heather Talley (2005) suggest that the very category of disability and the potential for inclusion rests on what people perceive as authentic. Posing the question of how disability comes to be viewed as ‘authentic’ or ‘unauthentic’, they highlight a number of studies that suggest that such categories are relational and are constructed by a range of actors, all of whom harbour different cultural identities, be those gender, socio-economic, ethnic or national.
As machine learning and online interaction has become inextricably entwined in ‘everyday behaviour’ (we can see this in choices ranging from smartphone cases to preferences for online dictionary interface) a myriad of these social groups, all involved in the authenticity trade, are now vying for representation and looking to be heard.
In an article that signals new approaches to disability and assistive technology, Smith et al. (2022) note that AT is now recognised as both a means to and an end in itself in the achievement of rights of persons with disabilities. Both the WHO and UNICEF encourage action to increase global access to AT. Concurrently, the service sector’s pursuit of the experiences and meaningful interactions of its customers as an antidote to the quantitative data generated by machine learning has picked up pace.
What is perceived as ‘authentic’ and the way in which such authenticity is negotiated among users have come centre stage in this debate. The focus of disability service providers is slowly shifting to accommodate the reality that, if we are truly customer focused, looking to increase accessibility and amplify the voices of persons with disabilities, we need to engage with this debate. My hope and belief is that the methods employed by anthropologists to explore ‘other people’s worlds’ are going to lead the way.
Gabril Hoskin is an assistive technology and study skills tutor with Assistive Solutions, a London-based social enterprise. His background is in ethnomusicology and his research interests include: cultural diversity, disability, popular music and migration.