Ableism and adaptive preferences in digital uses and skills: Social and cultural conditioning factors

Abstract

This theoretical paper aims to highlight interactions between ableism and adaptive preferences that involve persons with disability with the purpose of identifying social and ideological conditioning factors in using digital media and developing digital skills. These factors encompass the availability of resources for accessing and using digital media as enabling tools capable of generating positive outcomes at an economic, social, political/civic, cultural and personal levels. Giving that digitalization processes encompass concepts of citizenship, autonomy, individual capabilities and social capital, then digital media and skills become crucial tools for equalizing opportunities and reducing inequalities. The pandemic emergency and the shift to distance learning revealed forms of digital education poverty that had a specific impact for persons with disability. Analysing the digital disability divide and inequality requires considering technological and economic variables, Universal Design principles, as well as social stratification, cultural influences, and material and symbolic resources. Digital inequalities and adaptive preferences are thus examined in their relations with social, cultural and ideological aspects that may affect expressed and perceived needs, attribution of meanings, motivation and aims which, in turn, affect access and usage of digital media as well as the development of digital skills. Taking into account these factors and their interconnections, the contribution aims to provide some guidelines for further future research aimed at deepening the socio-technical, cultural, and ideological matrices of digital inequalities affecting persons with disabilities.