Disability, Society and Assistive Technology: A Multidisciplinary Field

This chapter draws on empirical examples from disabled people's everyday life. It argues the need of a new research approach combining the perspectives of disability studies and science, technology and society (STS) studies. The perspectives STS studies include: an actor-network perspective, a disability script perspective, a gender script perspective and an intersectionality perspective. Intersectionality has particular relevance for research with individuals who encounter multiple forms of oppression. The chapter provides a short insight into our position at the intersection of the fields of disability studies, STS studies and assistive technology (AT). It also provides a short overview of the book. Furthermore, assistive technologies connect to universal design (UD). AT deals with important rehabilitation issues. In this way, these technologies connect to the medical discourse. The provision of AT has to date taken place in restricted and regulated markets.