[csaa-forum] CFA: Disability, Technology and Digital Inclusion in Southeast Asia (deadline 2 Feb 2024)

[vic z]

CFA: Disability, Technology and Digital Inclusion in Southeast Asia 
 
Organizers: Kuansong Victor ZHUANG, Gerard GOGGIN, Jennifer SMITH-MERRY 
 
Sponsored by: 
Centre for Disability Research and Policy, University of Sydney 
Sydney Southeast Asia Centre, University of Sydney 
Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University 
Asian Communication Research Centre, Nanyang Technological University 
 
Online only
8 March 2024, 11am to 6pm AEST 
 
Asia has been widely noted as the world’s largest market in digital technology. While researchers have focused on the efforts of Japan, South Korea, and China, Southeast Asia has been on the rise for the past 5-10 years, especially attracting attention with the prominence of digital platform companies such as Gojek (headquartered in Indonesia) and Grab (Singapore HQ). These digital platform companies have established a foothold not only in their home countries (Indonesia and Malaysia) but also expanded across the region. Such extensive digitalization of society is mirrored by a longer historical trajectory of Southeast Asian countries adopting the smart and technology as enablers for economic growth of development, for instance in Singapore (Goggin and Zhuang 2022) and Malaysia (Bunnell 2015, 2004), just to name two.

We juxtapose this with the emergence of disability as an area of considerable research, social, and policy importance across Southeast Asia, underpinned by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and regional initiatives like the Incheon Strategy and the ASEAN Enabling Masterplan. Notably, the third Asian-Pacific Decade of Persons with Disabilities 2023-2032 was convened in Indonesia and culminated in the Jakarta Declaration. Across Southeast Asia, we see vibrant disabled communities and research appearing, as well as various government attempts at achieving disability inclusion. In particular, the ASEAN Enabling Masterplan puts forth key recommendations to support the development of inclusive ICTs. AEC 12 highlights the importance of “Promot[ing] smart city projects that have inclusive infrastructure and technologies that are accessible to urban dwellers with disabilities”, while AEC 13 notes the need to “Encourage inclusive ICT by improving its accessibility and usability for persons with disabilities and by upgrading digital skill sets of developers and users to have a more digitally empowered and connected ASEAN people and stakeholders” (ASEAN 2019).  Accordingly, digital inclusion for people with disability is a high priority area for policymakers, industry, technology designs, institutions (such as education, law, and others), and civil society organizations, even as digital forms of governance are increasingly prevalent.
 
We bring together these developments – the extensive digitalization of society and the use of technology in all aspects of life (especially with disability), the embrace of disability rights globally, and the pursuit of digital inclusion by Southeast Asian nation states – into productive conversation. While digital technology is a crucial area for realizing goals of social and economic participation as well as rights, the practices of digital inclusion are however not uniformly spread among people with disability across the region; what some have described as digital divides and digital inequalities (Goggin 2017; Dobransky and Hargittai 2016; Hargittai and Hsieh 2013). There have been estimated to be more than 90 million people in Southeast Asia with disability, and for many, assistive technology is a key part of their lives. Importantly, many disabled people are not able to fully participate in society on an equal basis with others and the WHO has called for government action and research to promote inclusion. 
 
Importantly, research focused on the intersections of technology, digital inclusion, and disability across Southeast Asia is very much nascent. Research and policy frameworks, exemplars, and models relating to disability and digital inclusion still largely derive from a small set of influential jurisdictions, including the US, UK, and Europe. 
 
In this call for abstracts, we invite research across disciplines that builds on disability studies’ core principles. Submissions may either focus on Southeast Asia as a region, and/or specific Southeast Asian nation-states. Submissions may consider focusing on addressing (but not limited to) any of the following themes and issues: 
·      Digital Citizenship
·      Digital Inclusion
·      Digital Justice 
·      Digital Governance 
·      Digital Inequalities 
·      Digital Transactions
·      Assistive Technology
·      Political Economy of technology and disability 
 
Instructions:
 
·      Email a 300-word abstract, excluding references to victor.zhuang at ntu.edu.sg <mailto:victor.zhuang at ntu.edu.sg> by 2 Feb 2024 with the subject line “Disability, Technology and Digital Inclusion in Southeast Asia”
·      Any queries should also be directed to victor.zhuang at ntu.edu.sg <mailto:victor.zhuang at ntu.edu.sg>
·      Please also state if you have any accessibility requirements.
·      The conference will be zoom only. 
·      Select presentations will be invited to submit full papers after the conference for a journal special issue (TBC).  
 
This event is funded and supported by the SSEAC Collaborative Research Grant, Disability and Digital Inclusion in Southeast Asia. 
 
References
ASEAN. 2019. ASEAN Enabling Masterplan 2025: Mainstreaming the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Jakarta: ASEAN Secretariat.
Bunnell, Tim. 2004. Malaysia, modernity and the multimedia super corridor: A critical geography of intelligent landscapes. Routledge.
---. 2015. "Smart city returns." Dialogues in Human Geography 5 (1): 45-48.
Dobransky, Kerry, and Eszter Hargittai. 2016. "Unrealized potential: Exploring the digital disability divide." Poetics 58: 18-28.
Goggin, Gerard. 2017. "Disability and digital inequalities: Rethinking digital divides with disability theory." In Theorizing Digital Divides, edited by Massimo Ragnedda and Glenn W. Muschert, 63-74. New York: Routledge.
Goggin, Gerard, and Kuansong Victor Zhuang. 2022. "Disability as Smart Equality: Inclusive Technology in a Digitally Advanced Nation." In Digital Inclusion: Enhancing Vulnerable People’s Social Inclusion and Welfare?, edited by Panayiota Tsatsou, 257-275. London: Palgrave.
Hargittai, Eszter, and Yu-li Patrick Hsieh. 2013. "Digital Inequality." In The Oxford Handbook of Internet Studies, edited by William H Dutton, 129-150. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
 
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