Beate. Ochsner

Der Beitrag geht der Frage nach, wie mediale Teilhabe von Menschen mit unterschiedlichen Behinderungen – etwa im beruflichen Kontext – ermöglicht oder verhindert wird. Untersuchungsgegenstand sind digitale Kommunikationspraktiken im Kontext von Videokonferenzen während der Coronapandemie. Ausgehend von der These, dass Be_hinderung bewusst oder unbewusst in digitale Technologien eingebaut und somit durch sie gesellschaftlich konstruiert wird, nehmen wir in den Blick, wie digitale Zusammenarbeit auf Distanz durch die Pandemie zwar massiv ausgebaut wurde, jedoch oftmals digitale Barrieren einzog. Mit unserer Analyse zeigen wir, wie wertvoll das Erfahrungswissen von Menschen mit Behinderungen sowie ein Verständnis ihrer Umgehungslösungen (Workarounds) sind. Zugleich machen wir darauf aufmerksam, wie selten dieses Expert*innenwissen in der technischen Realisierung Berücksichtigung findet.Die Untersuchung an der Schnittstelle von Medienwissenschaft, Autoethnographie und Designtheorie schlägt eine Rekonzeptualisierung des Konzepts der Zugänglichkeit vor, die am Beispiel von Videokonferenzen eine fortlaufende kollaborative, kooperative (Schüttpelz und Gießmann 2015) Anstrengung beschreibt und dabei relevantes Zugangswissen und Zugangsarbeit (Hamraie 2018) umfasst. Beides setzt sich, so demonstriert der Beitrag, aus situierten Umgehungslösungen, individuellen Hacks und Improvisationen zusammen, die das produktive, innovative Potenzial einer Zusammenführung von Menschen mit Behinderungen, sensorischen Praktiken, Erfahrungen und digitalen Medien offenlegen.Die Teilhabe von Menschen mit Behinderungen in Gestaltungsprozessen von Technologie ist oft unzureichend, was zu einer Vernachlässigung ihrer Bedürfnisse führen kann. Zugänglichkeit erfordert zugleich kontinuierliche kollaborative Anstrengungen und beinhaltet Zugangswissen und Zugangsarbeit. Es zeigt sich umso mehr, dass Nutzer*innen eine aktivere Rolle in Gestaltungsprozessen zukommen sollte. Workarounds und Hacks erweisen sich dabei als wertvolle Informationsquellen für Forschungs- und Entwicklungsprozesse.

Against the backdrop of an aging world population increasingly affected by a diverse range of abilities and disabilities as well as the rise of ubiquitous computing and digital app cultures, this paper questions how mobile technologies mediate between heterogeneous environments and sensing beings. To approach the current technological manufacturing of the senses, two lines of thought are of importance: First, there is a need to critically reflect upon the concept of assistive technologies as artifacts providing tangible solutions for a specific disability. Second, the conventional distinction between user and environment requires a differentiated consideration. This contribution will first review James Gibson’s concept of “affordances” and modify this approach by introducing theories and methods of Science and Technology Studies and Actor-Network Theory. Then, we present two case studies where we explore the relations between recent “assistive” app technologies and human sensory perception. As hearing and seeing are key in this regard, we concentrate on two specific media technologies: ReSound LINX2, a hearing aid which allows for direct connect with iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch, and Camassia, an IOS app for sonic wayfinding for blind people. We emphasize the significance of dis-/abling practices for manufacturing novel forms of hearing and seeing and drawing on sources like promotional materials by manufacturers, ads, or user testimonials and reviews. Our analysis is interested in the reciprocal relationships between users and their socio-technical and media environments. By and large, this contribution will provide crucial insights into the contemporary entanglement of algorithm-driven technologies, daily practices, and sensing subjects: the production of techno-sensory arrangements.

The contribution analyses (self-)descriptions of hearing experiences articulated by cochlear implant (CI) users through internet blogs. These auto-medial testimonies (Dünne/Moser) are understood as elements of an individuation process that reciprocally produces the CI-user as well as the CI itself. The analysis therefore focuses on those acoustic effects that are established by the CI, its first activation and the further mapping or adaptation processes as well as early CI-hearing experiences and subsequent listening exercises. It can thus be shown how the cultural practice of hearing/non-hearing is produced within a specific socio-technical arrangement.

Against the backdrop of these works (Mitchell/Snyder and others), we propose an analysis of films with and about blind or visually disabled individuals that aims at exploring different modes of world perception. In our view, such an examination should not only discuss the question of “giving voice” and visibility to those who were formerly only represented in or by the media, or the fact that films belonging to what might be considered a “new disability documentary cinema” are dedicated to the experience of disability from the point of view of those who deal with it. Rather, we examine films that do not restrict their field of vision to institutional context as cultural productions. These films allow the viewer to get to know different practices of seeing in the daily life of both blind or visually disabled and sighted people. In approaching these productions, we are interested in focusing on how the audio-visual regimes produce and structure our visual experience, translate it into a filmic grammar and thus not only create filmic patterns of blind perception but, at the same time, the cinematographic aesthetic of a so-called normal sightedness.

The paper focuses on processes of normalization through which dis/ability is simultaneously produced in specific collectives, networks, and socio-technological systems that enable the construction of such demarcations. Our point of departure is the cochlear implant, a neuroprosthetic device intended to replace and/or augment the function of the damaged inner ear. Unlike hearing aids, which amplify sounds, the CI does the work of damaged hair cells in the inner ear by providing sound signals to the brain. We examine the processes of the CI’s genesis as well as its specific uses by and interrelations to the different and divergent actors that the CI assembles. We argue that the technological device and the implicated normalization process mobilize complex effects in varying socio-technical arrangements. The CI is conceived as a “boundary object” [89] or a “quasi-object” [49, 83], i.e., a metastabilized medium of translation that coordinates social, cultural, and technological action. Although intended to transform non-hearing or hard of hearing people into competent and “normal” hearing subjects, the CI system reproduces the asymmetrical structures of the disability discourse [14] through its function of “developing and maintaining coherence between intersecting social worlds” [89, 393]. Additionally, it initiates controversial discourses that have resulted in new forms of biosocial collectivities ranging from cochlear implantees with normal human hearing to human configurations who have passed through human enhancement. Our approach is thus situated at the intersection of disability and media studies and tackles the particular conditions technological media configurations impose upon the production of dis/ability