Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement

Disability activist Shew (Animal Constructions and Technological Knowledge) asks people to reconsider the assumption that disability is a problem that needs to be solved by technology in this amusing and persuasive polemic. Shew describes technoableism, a word she coined, as a “belief... that considers the elimination of disability a good thing, something we should strive for”—and argues that the mindset is responsible for flawed, ineffective, and inessential technology that most disabled people don’t want or can’t use. For example, cochlear implants are widely portrayed as “curing” deafness in infants, but it often takes years for children using them to learn how to communicate, and they don’t always work, need frequent maintenance, and remove all natural hearing; activists in the Deaf community have pushed back against the medical community’s presumption that Deaf children, by default, require this flawed technology. Rather than assuming disability “is a problem that resides within individual disabled people,” Shew prefers a social model of disability, wherein the problems caused by disability are viewed a structural issue. Questioning whether anyone needs to be fixed at all, Shew posits an alternative way of viewing the world—one where people with disabilities are considered not just the experts on their own bodies but as experts on uncertainty and injustice, who are uniquely qualified to be architects of a more equal future. “We should always be planning with disability in mind,” she writes, “because disability is an inherent part of having squishy meat bodies.” Equally fierce and funny, this will galvanize readers to demand genuine equity for people with disabilities. (Sept.)