E40: The Intersection of Disability, Technology, and Media: Redefining Inclusion in the Digital Age

In this episode of the United in Accessibility podcast, we explore the transformative impact of emerging technologies on disability rights, delving into how AI and digital media are reshaping inclusion. We also discuss the evolving role of advocacy in driving socio-technical change for the future of accessibility.

Transcript

00:02 Speaker  

Welcome to the United in Accessibility podcast! Today, we're honored to have Victor Zhuang, a leading Disability Communications and Media Scholar, join us. Victor is currently a Visiting Fellow at the University of Sydney and an International Postdoctoral Scholar at Nanyang Technological University. Additionally, he serves as a G3ict Country Advisor for Singapore, contributing his expertise to the global Smart Cities for All initiative.  As a former Chevening Scholar and Princeton University Fung Global Fellow, Victor brings a wealth of knowledge to our conversation, particularly in areas like digital inclusion, the sociotechnical imaginaries of disability in emerging technologies, and the integration of sustainable futures and disability in smart cities.  We look forward to an insightful discussion that sheds light on the transformative role of media and communication in advancing disability inclusion on the United in Accessibility podcast. 

01:01 Mohammed Ali Loutfy  

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the United in Accessibility podcast series. It's the Global Initiative for Inclusive ICTs podcast. We are here with great pleasure welcoming our country advisor in Singapore, Mr. Victor Zhuang, it's a pleasure Victor, to have you with us today. My name is Mohammed Loutfy. I am Global Initiative for inclusive information and communication technologies, Director for Advocacy and Capacity Building. Victor, can you please introduce yourself and share a bit about your journey into disability studies, and if you can tell us what has inspired you to enter and focus on this field.

01:42 Victor Zhuang  

Thanks, Mohammed. It's been a pleasure to be here to be on this podcast. So again, my name is Victor Zhuang. My full name is actually Kwan Song, Victor Zhuang but you know, people know me by Victor. I'm currently an assistant professor in disability communication at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological University Singapore. So, I think, in a nutshell, perhaps, I mean, it's been a long journey into disability studies for me, and I think what got me started on disability studies is also what inspired me, and, you know, it continues to motivate me in the work I do. I think I started working on disability issues, I would say, coincidentally, new by accident, around 17 years ago, 2007 so in 2007 you know, I was an undergraduate doing history in Singapore, and I was sort of wondering, like, what kind of research I could do, right, that would interest me. And my dad's supervisor was now based in Taipei, Sai Siew Min, Dr Sai Siew Min I mean, right? Brought me to the AGM, the Annual General Meeting of Disabled People's Association Singapore, which is the local organization, local branch of disabled people's international based in Singapore. And at that meeting, I met Ron Chandran-Dudley, who is the founder chairperson of both the local branch of disabled people's Association Singapore, but also the founder chairperson of Disabled People's International. So, I started doing work around disability history and disability activism in 2007 interview Ron Chandran-Dudley, he became like a grandfather to me. So, he told me a lot of stories about disabled people's activism internationally. I used to hear these stories every fortnightly, we'll go have a glass of whiskey at this place, and then he would tell the stories. And I think that's what really inspired me, right this larger movement of disabled people and their activism internationally. And so, when Uncle Ron eventually passed away unexpectedly in 2014/2015, I thought that, well, it was time to go do a PhD, and so that was how I decided to go do a PhD and went to do more critical research on disability in Singapore. But in between, I was doing quite a lot of work in Singapore, actually, with SG Enable, which is the National Agency for Disability in Singapore. So, I would guess that's how I really got started. But I think, but really inspired me to focus on the field, was really this interaction and meeting uncle Ron.

04:46 Mohammed Ali Loutfy  

Wonderful. Well, what's better than encountering some inspiring leaders to push us towards new fields of studies and the disability movement is full of very inspiring people, whose life experience would really encourage us to keep up with what we are doing, and opens up new potentials and new ideas, new vision, new thoughts about experiences of persons with disabilities around the world. Well, thank you, Victor, how has your experience as a Chevening scholar and Princeton University Fung Global Fellow influenced your research on disability and inclusion?

05:35 Victor Zhuang  

 Thanks, Mohammed. I think Yeah. I mean, I was just going to answer this question on my experience as a Chevening scholar and a Princeton University Fung Fellow, right? Perhaps also just bringing in my experience at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where I did my PhD with Leonard Davis, and also saying this, because I think this associates with sort of this initial question of what really inspired me and to focus on the view of disability work, which is that there is, I think perhaps more regional, more Singapore based, kind of disability studies, disability activism. Perhaps it's very different from disability theorizing, disability experiences from countries like America and the UK. So, I think in many ways, like when I got the Chevening in 2013/2014 and I went to Leeds, for those of you who might know, University of Leeds, they have a bachelor's and master's in disability studies program, and Leeds was where really the social model of disability took root. So, Colin Barnes was based, at Leeds I was there in the final semester that he was teaching and so I got a schooling, I think, in sort of the social model, the orthodoxy of the social model of disability, which is great, really wonderful, very political, very strong kind of activism that's going on in the UK, especially around disability arising. And then when I went to the States, right both in Princeton and in Illinois, Chicago, I realized that in the States, the kind of activism, the kind of theorizing, it's very different from Leeds, very cultural, very much based on minority model, very much led by the humanities, I would say. And I think that has allowed me to think like, you know, how can we then think about disability and inclusion in Singapore? Of course, we could always critique the kinds of understanding of disability policy in Singapore, right? So, for instance, if you talk to any activists, I wouldn't even call them activists. They might not call themselves as disabled activists in Singapore. They might say they are advocates and still activist, because activists have these human rights kinds of association in Singapore, and that might be frowned upon in the Singapore context. So, folks might say they're advocates, and so the right kind of anger takes a back date in Singapore. So, I guess just going to the UK, spending time in the UK, understanding sort of disability theorizing and understanding disability theorizing in the states to allow me to think like, you know, what's the difference between that and in Singapore? And I think that has really influenced my work around disability and inclusion that I've been doing all these years. 

08:48 Mohammed Ali Loutfy  

Thank you, Victor. Indeed, I myself as also a person who did my PhD in the US, I have noticed the dwelling of studies, or, like higher education studies on the intersectionality of different issues, including persons with disabilities, rights and other minority groups, maybe, and the comprehensive work that's been done on policy development and disability inclusion, that's very inspiring. And I think this issue of intersectionality proves that disability inclusion is not only meaningful and necessary or helpful for persons with disabilities only, but it's more universal and more holistic, more beneficial for all people. Well, speaking of that and talking about intersectionality, I know that your research dwells into the intersectionality of disability and emerging technologies. Can you tell us about some key findings of your current project?

09:51 Victor Zhuang  

Yeah, yeah, of course. So, I think one sort of, I feel that maybe one way to preface this is to say that throughout my life, throughout my career, I've been meeting people who have been really influential and really generous in mentoring and sharing their time with me. Uncle Ron, of course, and of course their lives, right? Uncle Ron was one, but I think in the past three, four years, I met Gerard Goggin, who's a senior, established scholar in disability Media and Communications. He is Australian based in Australia, but has done a lot of work in telecommunications, digital disability and so and so forth, especially in Australian context, but also global context. He and I were sort of speaking, and then we decided that we will collaborate on sort of this project around emerging technologies, just to think about the issues involved with emerging technology. So, the classic case that a lot of people have been writing about, a lot of scholars have been writing about, has been, you know, AI and algorithms, right? And how that and automated decision making, how that affects disability, right? But they are also a range of emerging technology. So you're thinking about printing, autonomous vehicles, robotics, you know, and anywhere you go, not just in sort of developed countries, the West, quote, unquote, the West, US, UK, but also back in Asian nation states, that's been so, you know, pleasant in the cityscape, especially so I think we have been sort of thinking about the intersections of disability and emerging technologies in various aspects. And I guess it's really nascent work that we're starting, but perhaps, and I feel like I'm jumping the gun here to talk about sort of the social, technical imaginaries of disability in emerging technologies, which might be the next question. But I think one of the things that we are very sort of curious about is how disability shape and shapes both, sort of, you know, the technical designs, technical kind of aspects of the technology, but also how the social understanding things of disability comes to shape the technology itself. If that makes sense.

12:28 Mohammed Ali Loutfy  

Yes, I agree with you. And also, we can think about it from a different angle, the role of emerging technologies in shaping our perspective about disability, the world's perspective about disability. Without having technology becoming more progress or advanced to meet needs of persons with disabilities, we would have not been able to access other rights. And without accessing other rights, we would not have been, you know, proving to the world that as persons with disabilities, we should be perceived on an equal basis with others. So, I wanted to add this point the role of technology. Yes, disability has influenced technology, but also technology has influenced lives of persons with disabilities, opening up more opportunities for inclusion and inclusivity. So, you address this issue of socio technical imaginaries, of disability and emerging technologies. Can you speak more about that? Can you explain to our listeners, to our audience, what it means that socio, technical, imaginaries and disability have been interconnected.

13:45 Victor Zhuang  

Of course, of course. And I think so perhaps one way to talk about social technical imaginaries, right, is to explain that this is a concept that is put forth by by Sheila Jasanoff, right, and Jasanoff says that social technical imaginaries are, quote, collectively held, institutionally stabilized, publicly perform visions of disabled futures animated by shared understandings of forms of social life and social order attainable, true and supportive of advances in science and technology are unquote, and that's sort of this, no definition of what social technical imaginaries are, by this famous scholar, Sheila Jasanoff. I think what this is trying to say very right, to put it in very layman terms, right is that in terms of technology, when technology, you know, are used, put forth, are imagined. They also come to imagine certain kinds of futures. And I think what we are trying to say also is that within the social technical imaginaries, disability is very, very much part of the futures that are sort of put forth in this technology. To use a very concrete example that many of us would be very familiar with today, would be to talk about driverless cars. So, we see driverless cars everywhere or in some places, right, especially in the States right on the West Coast, right, they are driverless cars. Right? They are, I think it's more past the pilot trial basis now. You can get like travelers, taxis, driverless Ubers on the West Coast, in California. But a lot of us will forget, or some of us might know, or might remember that when Google first tested its driverless car in the 1990s or so on the West Coast, they actually invited a blind man to be the first test rider. So, in subsequent ads and videos mayhem, I think Steve Mahan was blind was sort of represented or highlighted as test user, 0001. So, in its initial sort of conceptualization, driverless cars had this idea, had this imagined future where blind people could cop onto a car and just drive anywhere they want, and was supposed to be enabling, supporting independent lives and so on and so forth. There was that kind of imaginary. Today, if you follow the discourse around driverless cars, you will realize that this notion of traveler’s cars, supporting disabled people taken aback. So if I'm not wrong, the following sort of the actual realization of those driverless taxes, driverless caps on the West Coast, disabled people's organizations had to put forth, you know, arguments to say that, you know, you need to ensure that driverless cars, drivers taxes, are accessible for disabled users, so that kind of imaginary right, that driverless cars in the 1990s could support disabled people's independence initially, has sort of died off, and nowadays the concern is more about risk. It's more about accidents and so and so forth. So, I think there is sort of like, perhaps a greater focus on the economic benefits that driverless cars could bring to the table today, rather than sort of how disability plays, how driverless cars could support disabled people. That this kind of understanding of where disability sits within technology that's very much shaped by how society feels, and society wants disabled people and disability to be seen and portray.

18:02 Speaker  

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18:35 Mohammed Ali Loutfy  

Excellent. I totally agree with you. It's amazing how technology today has transformed the conceptualization and understanding of society about disability and persons with disabilities. Now, when people see us use computers or use technology, and they see what we do with digital accessibility or with assistive technologies we have and I mean, they are amazed and that they realize that persons with disabilities are really capable of being active in society. I mean, it's the same thing when traditional societies, we used to get support from other people. Now, instead of getting support from other people, we're getting support on our own using these technologies. So, this aspect of independence and proving our capability of, you know, doing things and getting involved and fulfilling ourselves, achieving with achievements in education or employment, or, as you said, maybe hopefully in the future with driving, that's a that's a great thing. So I want to ask you about your perspective on the role of emerging technologies like IOT or Artificial Intelligence in shaping the future of accessibility and inclusion.

20:00 Victor Zhuang  

Perfect, perfect. I think that's very important as well, and I totally agree with you that today, these forms of technology are increasingly playing a big role in ensuring disabled people have equal access and equal opportunity. But at the same time, we probably need to preface that this is not possible without a focus on disability rights, as encapsulated in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, that we shouldn't see emerging technologies like IOT, AI as simply being technologies that enable disabled people without any connection right to the underlying context of International Disability Rights that underpins these technologies. So, what I'm trying to say is that these technologies cannot exist without the fundamental alignment to disability rights. And moving on from that, really, I think one of perhaps a very recent piece that myself and Gerard Goggin, we've collaborated on and wrote about, is really a piece thinking about the adoption of AI Artificial Intelligence across different aspects of work, not just in hiring and not just in interviews, which a lot of people have talked about, but also with, you know, across other aspects of the work, of perhaps the work chain, right? So, you're thinking about job redesign and team formation and so on and so forth. And they are people and research and scholars and practitioners who are adopting AI across different aspects of employment as such as those that are laid out above. And I think what we were trying to say in that piece is that you cannot just see sort of the economic benefits of AI in that sense, in terms of not friend, great colleague supporting your work to do certain tasks, but it's like a double-edged sword. There are benefits to AI in using it in such ways, but there are also problems, right problems that may, you know, create barriers to disabled people, and that's what we are in particularly concerned about, right? So, there is a role that emerging technologies can take. They create access, they enable disabled people to do certain tasks, right and to be able to gain access to society, to circumvent barriers. But this emerging technology should not exist without an underpinning, alignment to rights, and even then, they might also pose problems as well. Excellent, excellent. Thank you. Thank you, Victor. I can hear your somehow, if I may say, a cynical perspective about the I mean, AI is important, but also, we should have the right standards so AI would be safe for persons with disabilities. So, I agree it's a double sword thing. Well, speaking of your experience in technologies and digital inclusion, emerging technologies and persons with disabilities, experiences. How has that helped you as a Country Advisor of G3ict, and your engagement with G3ict, smart cities. Thanks, Mohammed. And yeah, I think it's perhaps at this stage I stayed at this great work done by G3ict and the smartest work or initiative. Those of us who are in the know will know that G3ict was formed sort of in the aftermath of the passing of the convention or the rights of persons with disabilities, with this sort of mandate to support the development of inclusive ICTs that align to Article 9 of the convention. And so that’s exactly what I'm saying, right? That technology cannot exist without rights. Right? If there is no alignment to rights, there might be the possibility that technologies will become problematic. And I think that's really such an important and fundamental work that G3ict is doing. So, I think for me, being able to come on board as a country advisor, I think that was perhaps three years ago, has been really useful. I think that is so the Smart Cities for all initiatives, really, a network of Country Advisors from different cities that are, you know, sharing best practices, how different cities approach. You know, this question of inclusive ICTs and. I think from the Singapore perspective, it's been particularly useful for me to share what Singapore is doing, and also to take back ideas to my Singapore colleagues, right colleagues who may be working in national agencies or the government or ministries, and to share that new there is this broader body of work, this broader community that has been pushing for Smart Cities for all, and I think that is really the unique selling point of the Smart Cities for all, initiative that it allows people to connect, to learn and to share and to network about ways in which technologies can be deployed for disability.

25:47 Mohammed Ali Loutfy  

Wonderful, I'm glad to hear that. I'm glad that you'll find and working with G3ict, an opportunity for sharing your experience and learning from other Country Advisors. And I know very well the work that you guys are doing in the Asia Pacific region. So that's great. So, you know we spoke about whether scholarly work and your work on promoting the rights of persons with disabilities to digital technologies and the role of emerging technologies in shaping or transforming the socioeconomic perspective of disability inclusion. Maybe we can talk a little bit about something that is somehow related, even though, indirectly, as you have written about, disability led arts and cultures. How do these forms of expression contribute the broader discourse on disability and inclusion? That’s excellent Victor. Through our certification programs under our International Association for Accessibility Professionals, IAAP, we always convey the message that accessibility is not beneficial only for persons with disabilities, but everybody can find a benefit in any accessibility feature, like what you described, audio description or closed captioning, what if it is also treated with some art became more artistic, it becomes more attractive, more compelling, more enjoyable by everybody. People would not consider it as something that is interrupting their enjoyment of art. So that's an excellent point. And also, this is another step towards changing people's perspective about persons with disabilities, you know, make inclusive more understood and accepted by society. Well, you wrote a book, I think it's called, not without us, but what do you say about what do you tell us about it? What would a reader learn from reading this book.

26:48 Victor Zhuang  

Thanks. Mohammed. Yeah, I mean, I don't see them as separate and distinct. Back when I wrote about disability led arts and culture, I think a lot of the focus was also about technology, perhaps to use a more recent example. So, in the Singapore context, there has been this wonderful and amazing theater production company called Access Path Productions led by my very close friend, great colleague, Grace Lee-Khoo and know Access Path is disabled led production company. So, they put up together with Katie O'Reilly and others, the first Singapore disabled theater, disabled led theater, it's called "And suddenly I disappear." And so, I wrote about that a couple of years ago in 2021. I think it first ran in, I really don't know, 2019 perhaps, and the article was published in 2021 I think so. I think in that show, what they did was, and one aspect that really, really caught my eye was the ways in which technology comes to be centered around disability, right? So rather than technology being used for disabled people, technology is centered around disability. So, it's technology of disabled people in that sense. So, what do I mean by that? Take, for instance, things that, audio description, closed captioning in a typical chatter production, in a media production, for instance, you might see them as providing access. So, people rely on them. Captioning and audio description as ways to, you know, access information that is communicated through the art, through the show, for instance. What Access Path and the theater production did was, instead of seeing those as simply providing access, these technologies are simply providing access, they made them art. So, your audio description became lyrical, it became like an art form, right? So, we know that audio descriptions are meant for blind users to, you know, describe the images, right? So as a sighted person, I was really impressed by the audio description because I felt that it gave a different layer of art and performance to the production itself. And so, these kinds of technology became technologies of disability, rather than for disability in itself. I think that is really a very powerful and very important aspect of disability expression that allows us to conceptualize how disability and inclusion should operate. Should it simply be technology being deployed to allow disabled people access to opportunities and participation in society, or can technology be of disability and allow for a rethinking of the kinds of norms that shape our society. And I think where I lean towards is really the latter. Thanks, Mohammed. And perhaps I thought it would be a good way to quickly also respond to what you just said about centering disability in the final part of your response is to say that I think it's important that technology be disabled led. And I think that's fundamentally what we are all very aligned towards, right? That things should be, you know, led by disabled people. So, we can see the kinds of imaginaries and possibilities that might emerge where disability centered as sort of this fundamental architecture of whether it is technology or the arts. So, to move on from this to the book, the title of the book, the full title, is called, "Not without us, perspectives on disability and inclusion in Singapore", is actually an editor volume. I'm the lead editor, and, you know, co editing this with Meng Ee Wong, applying academic at the National Institute of Education, and Dan Goodley, who's academic at the University of Sheffield. And it's been really exciting to be able to collaborate and co-edit this book with the both of them. I think what really fundamentally a little bit of history here tries to project is, I think our shared exploration to know how disability studies in Singapore can develop. And we wanted to see the kinds of perspectives disabled researchers, disabled people, people interested in disability, could develop from the Singapore context, and how we can also center some of these fundamental knowledges that created by disabled people elsewhere within the book in itself. So, I think first of all, the book was, and was sort of a milestone, a landmark, right in trying to make the case that there are disability studies in Singapore, that there are people who are interested, people who are willing to write about it in Singapore. And so we managed to create a collection of, I think, 19 chapters, comprising a majority of disabled or contributors who identify as disabled, putting in new chapters for the book, we had a range of perspectives, a diversity of modalities of expression, ranging from your typical academic kind of contributors who wrote in a very academic style, but also people who wrote about their life experiences performing self or autoethnography and using that as a means to think about sort of societal barriers and structures as well as different modes of expression. So, we had interviews, we had people who used art as ways of conveying what they felt about disability and inclusion. So not without us. I think was fundamentally a label from the three of us editors, it took over three years to from conceptualization to publication. But I think what we were trying to do with that book was trying to center disability, and trying to show that it was not only academics who could write about disability in Singapore, but also to involve disabled contributors to write about it from their own personal lens. So, I think the kinds of insights that we drew, that we that a user could draw, of course, myriad, right? You could draw different, different insights. But I would like to say that if you see the book as a book on its whole, you see that what we're trying to do is really to try to center disability, from the production to publication, and perhaps at this stage that we might also want to share that, myself and my fellow editors, Meng and Dan, and then we're very proud to share that, not without us recently won best nonfiction at the Singapore Book Awards for 2024 so that's really, I think, a testament to the strength and the kinds of powerful insights that the book gives right, and also to say that this could not have been possible without the contributors believing in the project.

36:20 Mohammed Ali Loutfy  

I like how you always tried to emphasize the role of persons with disabilities as leaders and contributors, whether to technology for the technology industry and or to scholarly work or any other of fiction and nonfiction works, we very much need to encourage our fellows with disabilities to contribute more and show the world that they to share that with the world their perspective through writing or through art and through more contributing, contributing more to innovative initiatives. So, thank you very much. Victor for this, this work you are doing and reaching the end of our interview, would like to ask you, like looking ahead, what are some of the ideas, takeaways, or even, you know, new initiatives you are starting to work on that you would like to leave our listeners with.

37:33 Victor Zhuang  

Thanks Mohammed. I think there's a lot of work I'm doing, maybe to give listeners a broad overview of what I'm doing, really is to say that I work around inclusion and both in the physical world and digital world. So, I have a couple of projects that look at Singapore and how, you know, Singapore conceptualizes inclusion, but also a couple of other projects that look at different aspects of all the intersections of technology and disability. Perhaps as a last note is to say that over the next six months, one of the key projects that I'm trying to do, which would be, of course, of interest to the IAAP community, is to try to develop a module that teaches, I think, digital inclusion in Singapore, in Asian Pacific context, in collaboration with, you know, Singapore agencies as well as Princeton University, taking a lead of the course that Princeton does for IAAP, for the CPACC certification, and try to do this in the Asian Pacific context. So hopefully we'll be able to do that in Singapore in the next six months and I'm excited about that.

38:51 Mohammed Ali Loutfy  

Well, give up the great work. Victor, thank you very much for joining us today, and we look forward to talking to you another time soon.

38:59 Victor Zhuang  

Thank you, Mohammed and thank you, everybody looking forward.

39:04 Speaker  

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