The Dynamic Coalition on Gender and Internet Governance session at Internet Governance Forum 2022 ‘Who’s Watching the Machines? New Tech, Gender, Race & Sexuality’ organised by the Association for Progressive Communications and Point of View Mumbai was a roundtable discussion on the intersection of advanced technologies, gender and sexuality, human rights online especially freedom of expression, and marginalised communities on 30 November 2022. Rising Flame’s Co-Lead Srinidhi Raghavan was at the session as a speaker, bringing in important insights at the intersection of disability and technology.
Srinidhi spoke about the inaccessibility of technology that is meant to “help” for many people with disabilities — such as the disability ID cards, as well as the role of emerging technologies and machine learning in profiling and excluding people with disabilities, as well as people who are perceived to be with disabilities under an ableist framework.
She also talked about how the technology that is used for the overall population is not really created using a disabled body in mind, which means immediate barriers to access whenever a disabled body comes in contact with it, which further impacts the view of technology as a “savior” for disabled populations, as well as the fact that although accessibility of technology is an important point of conversation, it is essential that we move beyond to accessibility to also see how technology is affecting disabled communities in other ways.