A Sense of Control: Virtual Communities for People with Mobility Impairments

This work is an exciting piece of research that looks at building online communities for, and from the perspective of, people with mobility disabilities. It makes a significant theoretical contribution to the study of technology, communities and disability as it develops a comprehensive theoretical framework for the design of online communities focused on this particular group of disabled people.

The author bases her book on the results of a qualitative study for which the underlying question is: How can virtual communities for persons with long‐term disabilities best be facilitated? To answer this research question, the study undertook 12 in‐depth interviews with physically challenged persons, as well as narratives of six health, information and policy professionals working with disabled people in Australia.

A high point of the study is precisely that it draws on a rich dataset, with analysis presented in a very accessible and clearly written manner. These features permit the reader to easily follow the author's main ideas: the notion of “sense of control” and her theoretical framework. In this respect the author identifies how technology allows people with long‐term mobility disabilities to achieve and/or regain a “sense of control” over their lives. A sense of control is about feeling self‐empowered and free from their condition of disability. Through technology people with physical disabilities experience what being part of a community means as temporal and spatial limits are overcome. This is an interesting contribution that helps us understand and promote online communities from the perspective of wellbeing instead of just with regard to the access to and use of technical equipment. At first glance, a sense of control approach seems an ethical and moral issue for society, but its arguments are well underpinned by the demands that disabled people have in terms of breaking out of social isolation and accessing information.

The author underlines that, although a sense of control is an imperative for physically challenged people, current design and development of online communities seems not to take this into consideration. It is for this reason that she presents a theoretical framework that could be used as “best practice” for building online communities for people with disabilities. Rather than hypothesising about disabled people's needs in the virtual world, the theoretical framework bases its development on the respondents' experiences with technology. The author's framework for online communities is constituted for the following categories: education and empowerment; information; fantasy; interest; relationship; and transaction. It is through the inclusion and interconnection of two or more of these categories in the design of online communities that, according to the author, a “sense of control” will be enhanced.

The book argues that the access to information will enable disabled people to play their part as active citizens in society and also as consumers in the marketplace. The author suggests understanding the interaction between disabled people and information in order to design information services and environment for them.

Among other points developed in the book, the discussion about the concept of disability is relevant. The author successfully contrasts traditional views that emphasize medical aspects of the notion of impairment with the approach of social construction of disability, a perspective that refers how social isolation is even more harmful that the disability itself. This social perspective of the concept of disability is in line with the well‐being approach for online communities proposed in the book.

Likewise, the author notes that, although online communities share similar features, in practice they are unique. She questions what she considers generic definitions of online communities that satisfy a multidisciplinary range of interests, and ambitiously proposes to refine the term. However, rather than refining the concept, she adopts a definition of online communities from the point‐of‐view of restricted social networks in jurisdictions and that are state‐created or state‐supported. This represents a constraint, as less attention is paid to online communities that emerge beyond particular jurisdictions and that to a large extent are providers of information, common practice and mutual learning, for instance.

This book presents a theoretical contribution to the discussion of online communities for people with long‐term mobility disabilities. The way it is developed has practical implications that should be considered by policy makers and other stakeholders as a starting point when they think about designing active, inclusive and participative online communities. A sense of control seems to be, thus, an imperative as it focuses on the human and social nature of online communities instead of technology as exclusive means of disable people's wellbeing.