“Your Say, Your Rights”
A Project about Information and Communication Technology
and Women with Disabilities
Sarah Boyd
Women with Disabilities Victoria
Presentation for
Infoxchange Disability and Digital Inclusion forum
22 May 2013
Background
In 2010, we applied for funding to look at the use of technologies to increase social support and information opportunities for women with disabilities, with a focus on those who are particularly isolated. Were awarded funding from the Victorian Women’s Trust.
A project worker was appointed.
The project conducted a series of roundtables with women with disabilities who experience isolation, lack access to information and lack input into decision making in the community.
A report was written on the findings of the project in late 2011, which was published in 2012.
A Media Release was sent out 4th April 2013.
Fantastic response received.
This project and report are by no means definitive – we are really just beginning the conversation …
PROJECT PARTNERS
Women with Disabilities Victoria
Women with Disabilities Victoria is a not for profit organisation made up of women with disabilities, who support women with disabilities to achieve their rights in Victoria. The organisation seeks change through community education, research, providing leadership training for women with disabilities, and influencing government policy and community services.
Women with Disabilities Victoria seek to focus on those areas where gender inequity and/or disability inequity have the biggest impact on the experience of women with disabilities to be able to be respected and fully experience life. Currently these areas of focus are violence against women with disabilities and access to health care, with a secondary focus on parenting rights and employment equality for women with disabilities.
To find out more, go to www.wdv.org.au
The Self Advocacy Resource Unit (SARU)
SARU resources and assists Victorian self advocacy groups for people with an intellectual disability, people with an acquired brain injury and people with complex communication support needs.
SARU has been funded to ensure the meaningful inclusion of people with a disability in organisational structure, strengthen existing self advocacy groups, support the establishment of new self advocacy groups, promote network development, develop resource materials to support self advocacy and describe and improve adviser (support worker) practice.
To find out more, go to www.saru.net.au
Funded by: The Victorian Women’s Trust
The Victorian Women’s Trust invest in women & girls for positive social change;research issues which affect their lives;work in key arenas ranging from violence prevention to environmental sustainability;create opportunities that spark ideas, engagement & debate;advocate for reforms that improve conditions for women & girls; and make sure the public record better reflects their contribution and impact.
To find out more, go to www.vwt.org.au
THE DIGITAL DIVIDE
Australian’s and the internet
o Ranked on internet users as a percentage of total population, Australia has the 5th highest level of internet penetration in the world (90%) (March 2102).
o We are experiencing the rapid wholesale digitisation of just about everything.
The ‘Have Nots’:
• poor
• disabled
• Indigenous
• remote
• older
• lower level of education
• unemployed
People with disabilities …
Have as much to gain – if not more – than people without disabilities.
o The internet and information communication technologies (ICT) provide opportunities for people with disabilities to transcend some socially excluding aspects of disability – due to the built environment, communication needs, discrimination.
o There are cost savings associated with universally designed technologies (eg. Apple products) that can access a plethora of apps that would have previously required expensive, specialist assistive technologies.
THE REPORT
Overview:
The report is a (32 page) summary of a participatory project conducted between May to November 2011to elicit women with disabilities views on access to ICT.
The Project Coordinator and author of this report was Chris Jennings.
It was published October 2012.
The project had a focus on women with disabilities who are particularly socially isolated:
• deaf-blind
• complex communication support needs
• intellectual disability
• acquired brain injury
The benefits …
o Information access
o Built environment restrictions don’t apply
o Increased social networking and connectedness to combat higher instance of isolation (evidence that women’s wellbeing is particularly increased by online involvement)
o Can choose to conceal/reveal disability within online forums and communities
o Opportunities for involvement in activism
o Access to government, community service providers, academic institutions and experts have to say.
o Be able to inform government and the broader community about the issues they face
Gender and ICT
The intersection of gender inequality and disability presents a situation of multiple disadvantage.
The report notes that women with disabilities too often face the compounding effects of poverty, lack of education and employment, fear of exploitation and gender stereotypes.
These multiple layers of disadvantage create barriers to accessing ICT that are extreme.
For example, the high incidence of unemployment amongst women with disabilities further denies them exposure to and familiarity with ICT otherwise afforded those in the workforce and at the same time limits the financial resources they need to buy their own computers and technical support.
When looking at labour force participation, women with disabilities are particularly affected, with a participation rate of 49% - well below the 60% participation rate of males with disabilities and the 77% participation rate of females without disabilities (ABS 2009). Women also have lower incomes from employment than men with disabilities.
Women with disabilities are over-represented in low socio-economic groups, compared to men with disabilities and women in general.
Many women with disabilities cannot afford to use ICT as part of their daily routine. Of the women who participated in Your Say Your Rights many spoke of having to cut internet connections to afford a mobile phone, and of having time in the month when they went without phone credit.
Gender stereotypes that maintain the view that women are less technologically able than men - experience lower confidence.
Lower levels of employment and education results in decreased exposure to technology and digital literacy.
The 2011 Able Australia repost on telecommunications and Deafblind Australians showed 58% of men had a mobile phone, compared to 38% of women surveyed.
Women with disabilities face multiple discriminations and are often more disadvantaged than men with disabilities in similar circumstances (WWDA snapshot) www.wwda.org.au/snapshot.htm
o while disabled people are much more likely to live in poverty, women with disabilities are likely to be poorer than men with disabilities;
o women with disabilities like other women, share the burden of responsibility for unpaid work in the private and social spheres, including for example, cooking, cleaning, caring for children and relatives. Women in Australia spend almost three times as many hours per week looking after children as men; and do two thirds of the unpaid caring and domestic work in Australian households;
o Women with disabilities have difficulty finding accessible housing, are more likely to be institutionalised than their male counterparts and are often forced to live in situations in which they experience, or are at risk of experiencing, violence, abuse (including the use of chemical and physical restraints) and neglect. The rising cost of housing means that women with disabilities, with less financial resources at their disposal than disabled men, are particularly vulnerable to living in insecure or inadequate housing.
Increased safety concerns
women are more likely to be concerned about safety than men. The project encountered many women (particularly women with intellectual disabilities) who felt that computers were too unsafe. For some women it was their history of sexual abuse that made them fearful of the internet.
Women with disabilities, regardless of age, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation or class are assaulted, raped and abused at a rate of at least two times greater than non-disabled women. Statistics indicate that 80-90% of women with intellectual disabilities have been sexually abused. 68% of women with an intellectual disability will be subjected to sexual abuse before they reach 18.
Some women ...
• didn’t recognise the value of access to them
• saw ICT as unfriendly
• Needed additional training and support (with set-up and connection), contracts, software usage
Gendered Solutions
Key Solutions & Recommendations
· Adopt universal design principles
· Create an encouraging gender friendly ICT Environment
· Campaign for stronger leadership
· Promote and share best practices
· Research
· Collaborate
· Educate
The Roundtables
The roundtables offered the women a safe and comfortable environment for information exchange, sharing and creative problem solving, focusing on learning more about topics such as:
o ‘Facebook! Is it for me?’ ‘How to safely use Social Media’,
o ‘How WIRE (Women’s Information Referral Exchange) uses technology to stay in
o touch with women’, ‘How technology could be used in the role of a self advocate?’, and
o ‘What’s all the excitement over the iPad?’
Final thoughts …
We are fast approaching a time when it is no longer an issue of personal choice — those without access to the internet will be seriously disadvantaged by society’s increasing use and dependence on it.
In Victoria, approximately 500,000 women experience disability.
International Human Rights treaty’s and state law have provisions around access to ICT or at least access to information. The National Disability Strategy outcomes include equal social, economic and cultural participation.
We can not homogenise the experience of all people with disabilities – there are different (gendered) issues, that require different solutions for digital inclusion.
Quote:
“It is dangerously destabilizing to have half the world on the cutting edge of technology while the other half struggles on the bare edge of survival.” – Bill Clinton
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