News
Role of technical aids for people with functional limitations
Technical aids, such as walkers or arm prostheses, are designed to solve practical problems. Using these technologies, people are expected to overcome obstacles and try to participate as much as possible in ‘normal life’. However, the impact of such technologies is not limited to their function.
These aids interfere in many complex ways in people’s daily life. They, for example, are part of the way people experience their own bodies, influence the way people deal with their social and material environment, or the way that people are looked at by others. Technical aids also play a part in the construction of disabled versus abled as two separate social categories.
In this research we would like to deepen the understanding of the complex, and often contradictory roles of technical aids in the daily lives of their users. We will, in particular, focus on the ways these technologies contribute to mechanisms of in- and exclusion and the related concept of (dis)ability. We will focus on four aids: walkers, hearing aids, arm prostheses and incontinence products.