Disability and Social Exclusion
Introduction
Social Exclusion describes a state in which individuals are unable to participate fully in economic, social, political and cultural life, as well as the process leading to and sustaining such a state. Disabilities is one of the major factors that could increase the risk of social exclusion towards people with disadvantages. People with disabilities make up 15% of the world’s population, but despite being one in five or six of us globally, there are still a lot of efforts needed to address the rights of persons with disabilities and to ensuring their equal participation in society and their access to services.
Main Stakeholders
Impact on Stakeholders
People with Disabilities
Positive
People with disabilities will develop effective self-advocacy and empower themselves more. They are often forgotten as part of the diverse landscape. People with disabilities should learn to speak out about what they need and what unfair situations they are experiencing. Moreover, they might adopt the current position and don't have a specific need for a new product.
Negative
People with disabilities missed a lot. It's hard for them to participate in online experiences. And there are specific jobs that they can't take simply because of the physical limitations.
Non-disabled People
Positive
The Non-Disabled Group's experience is usually much smoother because they are considered the "norm" and the primary target group for many services and products.
They are also the first group to enjoy the latest products and services because of faster development timeframes than products for disabled groups, which requires more testing and consideration before production.
Negative
Equality and inclusion tend to be more like a slogan and actual actions are never considered to be taken in action when certain groups of people are only politically correct to avoid judgements. This could exacerbates superiority of the non-disabled group and increase the lack of awareness of diversity in different scenarios.
Tech Companies
Positive
Since targeting the non-disabled group as main customers was the mainstream, as companies build new products, it's easier for them to reference the existing experiences and mass produce more unified new ones in faster timeframes.
Negative
As the topic of inclusion and social responsibility is more emphasized in the society, companies failed to do so would involve in criticisms and potential legal issues. When companies start to emphasize inclusivity and responsibility in their products and come up with plans for mitigation, more resources (financial+human) are required for research and creating new experiences for the disabled group with better accessibility.
Society as a Whole
Positive
When talking about morality and ethics, it is hard to look for the benefits of excluding people. However, this could help to cut product development costs. It will save money, energy, and resources to study user needs and potentially provide more funds to develop advanced products that benefit non-disabled people, the majority.
Negative
The existence of social exclusion makes it difficult to achieve particular social objectives, including people with disabilities. Social exclusion also generally involves exclusion in more than one dimension, and these can reinforce each other. For example, a combination of economic and educational exclusion makes it more difficult to advance on either front. It will accelerate the turmoil of the society.
Key relationships between macro stakeholders
Businesses vs Individuals
To embrace everyone, businesses have to invest more in research and development, and it will also demand more time to develop products. While clearly, it is positive, some non-disabled users will probably complain about the delay in launching products and a possible extra cost to cover research and development. When a single product tries to match every user, it is cheaper to produce, but at the same time, it possibly won’t be the best solution for any of the user groups or will only attend fully one group of customers.
Individuals vs the Planet
The best experience to address all sorts of users is to have the best product to match each of them. However, from a sustainability point of view, a standard product to serve many purposes would require less material.
(molds for injection, for example)
Businesses vs Individuals
Another point of friction is the uncertainty about how to address disabilities in products. Some companies (and individuals) believe that having a universal design that everyone can use (at least in theory) is more inclusive because people with disabilities wouldn’t need specific products. However, this can make result in a product that is less than ideal for them. On the other hand, we have companies and individuals that believe a custom experience would best benefit the user.
Individuals (People with Disabilities & Non-disabled people)
Most of the times, a universal design is not the best solution for non-disabled people. (For example: blind tracks on the pavements are not friendly to people wearing high heels.) By giving up the ideal solutions for non-disabled users, the products being friendly to people with disabilities also arouse non-disabled people's awareness of the diversity of the society.