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Societies
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Exploring Disability in the Digital Realm
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Exploring Disability in the Digital Realm

A special issue of Societies (ISSN 2075-4698). This special issue belongs to the section "Disabled People/People with Disabilities (Non-Medical Coverage)".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 1 May 2025 | Viewed by 5908

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Beth Haller

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Mass Communication Faculty, Towson University, Towson, MD 21252, USA
Interests: mass media representations of disability (both entertainment and news); disabled media creators; disabled people within digital media; disability media history
Dr. Jeff Preston

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
King's University College, Western University, London, ON N6A 2M3, Canada
Interests: representations of disability in pop culture; digital memes; cultures and communities; technology and subjectivity

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

One billion people, 15% of the world’s population, identify as disabled, with the number of disabled people even higher in the Global South according to The World Bank. Several decades into a global disruption caused by the Internet, disabled people often lack access to information communication technology or online spaces. Despite being a new space for human interaction and community, the online world is similarly plagued by barriers that prevent disabled people from participating in what the business world calls the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Disabled children can struggle to access the digital tools now used in education, whether because they cannot afford specialized adaptive technology needed to make computers accessible or because learning platforms are incompatible with existing adaptive technology. Similarly, disabled adults can struggle to find or maintain employment because of an increased expectation of digital skills or technology. However, even though the digital realm is filled with injustices, many disabled people also feel empowered by their digital technology. New adaptive devices offer disabled people a level of access previously unattainable, with telework platforms opening new employment opportunities for those unable to find accessible employment. The rise of 3D printing and schematic sharing online is slowly changing the relationship between users and manufacturers of adaptive devices. Social media platforms have enabled disability communities to form beyond geographic boundaries and foster an evolving disability culture. These networks provide an opportunity to show their resilience and ingenuity by sharing “life hacks” on how to survive in an inaccessible world. Just as important, though, social media has offered a vital tool in activist organizing and solidarity, pushing disability rights into the mainstream conversation and amplifying the voices of the disability justice movement.

This Special Issue calls for research articles that investigate the many places disability resides in the digital world. From art to social networking to telework to gaming, articles can explore a variety of issues that disabled people face in the digital realm. What do access and inclusion mean in digital spaces? How does injustice and exclusion occur in digital spaces? How might we better understand the digital divide through the lens of ableism? How is the disability community represented in digital media? 

This Special Issue will contribute to the growing interest about disabled people in digital spaces within the discipline of critical disability studies/disability studies.

Contributions must follow one of the three categories of papers for the journal (article, conceptual paper, or review) and address the topic of the Special Issue.

Dr. Beth Haller
Dr. Jeff Preston
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as conceptual papers are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Societies is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • disability
  • digital access
  • social media
  • inclusion/exclusion
  • digital art
  • virtual reality
  • social networking
  • intersectionality
  • universal design
  • online gaming
  • digital divide
  • remote work
  • online representation
  • mobile communication
  • digital literacy
  • telehealth
  • memes
  • audio description
  • assistive technology
  • digital life hacks

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Further information on MDPI's Special Issue polices can be found here.

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

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14 pages, 253 KiB  
Article
Echoes of Madness: Exploring Disability and Mental Illness in Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice
by Sina Torabi and Jeff Preston
Societies 2024, 14(9), 170; https://doi.org/10.3390/soc14090170 - 3 Sep 2024
Viewed by 828
Abstract
Video games are known for many things, but nuanced portrayals of characters with mental illness might not be one of them. This trend, however, has gradually started to shift with games like Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, which aim to convey a genuine experience [...] Read more.
Video games are known for many things, but nuanced portrayals of characters with mental illness might not be one of them. This trend, however, has gradually started to shift with games like Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, which aim to convey a genuine experience of mental illness to the player. Through a close reading of different instances in the game, this paper shows how Hellblade complicates the usual sanist ideas seen in most other games by taking an ambiguous stance, using mental illness as a representational tool. Furthermore, it avoids some of the more sensationalist and problematic tropes often employed in such representations, like the supercrip and the Cartesian divide of the body and mind. In order to show this, we have employed Mitchel and Snyder’s concept of narrative prosthesis to demonstrate how the game does not in fact rely on Senua’s disability as an exotic feature of the narrative to hook players in. By combining insights from disability and mad studies, we show how this game is a step in the right direction when it comes to challenging the perceptions of mental illness prevalent in pop culture. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Exploring Disability in the Digital Realm)

Other

Jump to: Research

17 pages, 268 KiB  
Concept Paper
Crip Digital Intimacies: The Social Dynamics of Creating Access through Digital Technology
by Megan A. Johnson, Eliza Chandler, Chelsea Temple Jones and Lisa East
Societies 2024, 14(9), 174; https://doi.org/10.3390/soc14090174 - 6 Sep 2024
Viewed by 834
Abstract
Disabled people are uniquely positioned in relation to the digital turn. Academic ableism, the inaccessibility of digital space, and gaps in digital literacy present barriers, while, at the same time, disabled, Deaf, and neurodivergent people’s access knowledge is at the forefront of innovations [...] Read more.
Disabled people are uniquely positioned in relation to the digital turn. Academic ableism, the inaccessibility of digital space, and gaps in digital literacy present barriers, while, at the same time, disabled, Deaf, and neurodivergent people’s access knowledge is at the forefront of innovations in culture and crip technoscience. This article explores disability, technology, and access through the concept of crip digital intimacy, a term that describes the relational and affective advances that disabled people make within digital space and through digital technology toward accessing the arts. We consider how moments of crip digital intimacy emerged through Accessing the Arts: Centring Disability Perspectives in Access Initiatives—a research project that explored how to make the arts more accessible through engaging disabled artist-participants in virtual storytelling, knowledge sharing, and art-making activities. Our analysis tracks how crip digital intimacies emerged through the ways participants collectively organized and facilitated access for themselves and each other. Guided by affordance theory and in line with the political thrust of crip technoscience, crip legibility, and access intimacy, we argue that crip digital intimacy emphasizes the interdependent and relational nature of access, recognizes the creativity and vitality of nonnormative bodyminds, and understands disability as a political—and frequently transgressive—way of being in the world. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Exploring Disability in the Digital Realm)
13 pages, 242 KiB  
Concept Paper
“You’ve Got to Put in the Time”: Neoliberal-Ableism and Disabled Streamers on Twitch
by Juan Carlos Escobar-Lamanna
Societies 2024, 14(6), 75; https://doi.org/10.3390/soc14060075 - 23 May 2024
Viewed by 1638
Abstract
This concept paper builds upon nascent research analyzing disability and the practice of videogame livestreaming on Twitch.tv. While a growing amount of scholarship analyzes the structure and organization of Twitch as a platform more broadly, with some attending to the platform’s marginalization of [...] Read more.
This concept paper builds upon nascent research analyzing disability and the practice of videogame livestreaming on Twitch.tv. While a growing amount of scholarship analyzes the structure and organization of Twitch as a platform more broadly, with some attending to the platform’s marginalization of women and BIPOC streamers, few studies investigate the challenges that Twitch’s features and structures present to disabled streamers. This paper addresses this gap in the literature, considering the ways in which Twitch offers disabled streamers unique economic and community-building opportunities through its monetization and identity tag features while simultaneously presenting barriers to disabled streamers through these very same features. Utilizing a critical disability studies perspective and drawing upon forum posts made by disabled streamers and interviews with disabled streamers from online gaming news websites, I argue that Twitch reifies forms of neoliberal-ableism through its prioritizing of individual labour, precarious forms of monetization that necessitate cultures of overwork and ‘grinding’, and targeted harassment, known as hate raids, against disabled and other marginalized streamers to ultimately create a kind of integrative access where disability is tolerated but not valued. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Exploring Disability in the Digital Realm)
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