Abstract
Challenged by the pandemic and its future aftermath, social work has been forced to relocate its relational social change mission and action to a new address, replacing a physical location with a URL. The need for digital accessibility thus has rapidly appeared and is now a major squeaky wheel in the profession. In order to make this move while upholding the professional mission of full inclusion, this chapter proposes a model of progressive digital accessibility. A synthetic framework marrying disjuncture theory and pragmatist ethics provides a rich foundation from which forensic analysis can expose and capitalize on “what is wrong,” disrupt business as usual, and innovate to achieve accessibility that is fluid, just, and worthy of social work leadership.
TopThe Recent And Current Technological World Of Social Work
That Thinkpad, the Apple II, the Commodore may seem like distant memories and fodder for museum exhibits illuminates three important points about the intersection, or not, of the digital world and social work:
- 1.
Personal computing and all that follows are not new.
- 2.
Social work has been lagging behind in technology uptake.
- 3.
The pandemic has forced social work to move off of its face-to-face center.
The following sage words from Curator (2020) demonstrate this Push-me pull-you kerfuffle:
Technology is set to have a profound impact on the way clients interact with social workers, and how social workers approach their work. For the most part, these changes should be beneficial. However, social workers will also need to adapt, and will need to acquire a whole new set of skills if they don’t want to be rendered obsolete. Only those that will be able to stay on top of these changes and learn how to use them to their advantage will be able to thrive.
The key terms in the Curator narrative above are “beneficial” and “adaptation”. The benefit first must be recognized in a profession that has held the proverbial professional hug as its hallmark, and then the adaptation must be swift, ethical, and effective in meeting social work goals and objectives, notwithstanding its own survival.
Clearly the pandemic, through its public health mechanism of social distancing, has elevated technological interaction as the primary tool of human contact not only in social work but way beyond. Contrary to previous awfulized predictions of screen-inflicted social isolation, the tables are now not only turned, but fully upended. According to the research conducted by Goldkind, Wold, & Freddolino (2019), when
..asked to consider what life will be like in 2025 in the wake of the outbreak of the global pandemic and other crises in 2020, some 915 innovators, developers, business and policy leaders, researchers and activists responded. Their broad and nearly universal view is that people’s relationship with technology will deepen as larger segments of the population come to rely more on digital connections for work, education, health care, daily commercial transactions and essential social interactions. A number describe this as a “tele-everything” world.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Social Model of Disability: Defines disability as contextual attitudes and practices that discriminate against the atypical body.
Digital Disjuncture: The inability to do a needed or desired task as a result of the interaction of individual and contextual virtual barriers.
Accommodation: Compliance to specialized disability legislation that provides for alterations.
Body: Broad conceptualization as the seat of human experience.
Forensic Analysis: A thinking process that reveals what is wrong as the basis for innovation.
Medical Model of Disability: Defines disability as a long term or permanent deficit diagnosed by a legitimate authority such as a health provider.
Progressive Digital Accessibility: A model of access that attends to all bodies.
Disjuncture Theory: Defines disability as the inability to accomplish a task as a result of body-context ill-fit.
Pragmatist Ethics: A school of ethical thought that foregrounds purpose as the guiding tenet for good and right.