A question of visibility: a rights-based look at ICT centers for persons with disabilities in Latin America

  • Authors:

  • Michele Frix;Joyojeet Pal

  • Affiliations:

  • The Seattle International Foundation, WA;University of Michigan, MI

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 4th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

In this paper, we examine the deployment of a group of technology centers serving people with disabilities in five Latin American countries: Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, and Venezuela. We explore the impacts of such training courses on the employability, socio-economic inclusion, and visibility of persons with disabilities in civil society. We find an important tension between the short-term objective of job creation for centers focused on individual capacity building, and the long-term goals of rights-based organizations to affect the visibility of people with disabilities in the public sphere. In particular, we examine the public library as a neutral, safe space in our comparison between programs in various countries. We come to the preliminary conclusion that a rights-based organization focused on community building, rather than individual capacity building, has the potential to be more effective in increasing the visibility of people with disability in the public sphere. We argue that the public image of disability and stigma associated with it cannot be extracted from technology training or individual capacity building. Therefore, centers serving people with disabilities must take into account the complex reality of employability for people with disabilities, particularly in the developing world.