I wanted to read and review Against TechnoAbleism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement (2023), by Ashley
Shew. Though Shew’s multiple disabilities are not developmental ones- they happened in her adult life,
she does make a point to highlight many types of disabilities and the ways in which society has historically excluded and discriminated against disabled people.
As a result of recurring cancer treatments, Shew is now, what she calls, “…a hard-of-hearing, chemobrained amputee with Chron’s disease and tinnitus and possibly some undiagnosed anxiety or PTSD….” But she does not center her experience in the text. She draws on it while making connections between how those who are able-bodied assume technologies will help disabled people “overcome” their disabilities and be ‘normal’ again, how the neurodivergent fight for a room in any discourse, and how disability discrimination is interlinked with other kinds of discrimination and oppressions.
Shew’s writing pushes the reader to make change happen now. Rather than using technologies to solve disability, we should use it to design for disability. Because we are all only temporarily able-bodied, and we should be building our communities with disability in mind.
