Disability as Smart Equality: Inclusive Technology in a Digitally Advanced Nation

This chapter makes a two-fold argument concerning disability and digital inclusion. Firstly, it builds upon and extends existing research and conceptualizations of disability and digital inclusion, now recognized as an area that merits sustained attention by policymakers and practitioners. Secondly, it suggests that disability in its diversity and intersectionality offers many insights, as well as practical, design, conceptual and policy ideas, for rethinking digital inclusion to meet the new challenges of emerging technologies and their social coordinates. We call this approach “smart equality” and outline the ways in which disability helps us develop this concept. Our chapter is based on a study of disability and digital inclusion in Singapore, a country that prides itself on being a leader in social experiments in technology. We mobilize “smart equality” to think about how disability can be used to think through the implementation of digital inclusion in the case of Singapore and elsewhere.