‘I like to play on the Fifa app’:Disabled children’s everyday experiences with digital technologies

Cranmer, Sue (2020) ‘I like to play on the Fifa app’:Disabled children’s everyday experiences with digital technologies. In: Children & Disability Webinar, 2020-09-102020-09-11, Online.

Abstract

Key legislation introduced to support disabled children includes the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN CRC); the 2007 UN Convention on the Rights Of Persons With Disabilities (UN CRPD). The aims of the former were path-breaking in respecting children’s rights. It marked a shift in two fundamental areas. Firstly, it established that children have the right to be heard in decisions affecting them. Secondly, it strengthened the right to inclusive education and non-discrimination on grounds of disability, ethnicity, gender, language, refugee status, religion. In 1989, the year that the UN CRC was adopted, Berners-Lee developed the foundations of the World Wide Web. Since then, digital technologies such as computers, laptops and the Internet have had a profound impact on children’s lives. More recently, mobile devices have been particularly impactful for disabled children due to convergence with assistive technologies. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that there have been calls to extend children’s rights to the online environment, to provide children with digital participation rights. Of course, the establishment of children’s rights in policy can only ever be part of the story. What is not clear is how disabled children are able to exercise these rights given the limited research that exists about disabled children’s uses of digital technologies. This chapter will, therefore, draw on case study research to explore digital participation in relation to disabled children. Drawing on research with adolescents in the north of England, it will explore how digital technologies support and challenge disabled children’s participation within their everyday lives. It will argue that whilst digital technologies can create opportunities for disabled children, they can also create barriers to participation that reflect offline challenges.