Abstract
Preface
Most technology isn’t built for those who need it the most, which is why it falls short for everyone else. My capstone project’s goal was to develop a mobile application with the primary goals of reducing digital overuse and promoting social interaction among teens to curb a loneliness epidemic driven by social media platforms that exploit psychological vulnerabilities through variable reward schedules, infinite scroll, and personalized algorithms. My STS research examines how evolving understandings of disability shaped the development of accessible mobile features that now improve usability for all users, tracing the shift from viewing disability as an individual impairment to understanding it as the result of socially constructed barriers that society has a responsibility to address. Central to the work of both projects is the argument that centering underserved users throughout the design process (whether they are socially isolated teens or people with disabilities) maximizes usability and appeal in ways that benefit all users and the broader population.
The capstone was structured into three interconnected phases. The first phase, research and design, focused on defining the app’s core purpose through a partnership with a Charlottesville-area youth advisory board (YAB), which helped to surface unmet needs and inform features that reflected real teen experiences. The second phase, prototyping and feedback, involved developing the app and iterating on its design through structured qualitative feedback and survey data collected from members of the youth advisory board and additional user groups. The third phase, refinement and delivery, centered on incorporating this feedback into the final prototype while establishing plans for future development and long-term maintenance. My STS research question asks how evolving understandings of disability have shaped the development and mainstreaming of mobile accessibility features, and how effectively those features meet the needs of the users they were designed to support. To analyze this technological evolution, I apply the Social Construction of Technology (SCOT) framework to identify key social groups -such as people with disabilities, developers, and advocates- and trace how disability models, ethical frameworks, and legal mandates, including the ADA, IDEA, and WCAG, catalyzed innovation, driving the integration of inclusive design principles into mobile technology.
The evidence reveals a consistent three-stage normalization arc throughout an accessibility feature’s lifecycle: disability-specific advocacy pushes for a feature to be developed; it is discovered by mainstream users for unrelated purposes; is rebranded as mainstream conveniences, and eventually becomes a baseline expectation in mobile design. Voice assistants, screen readers, and auto-captioning are the clearest examples of the arc. This mainstreaming carries a cost: the disability community's early role in shaping the feature’s design recedes, and the technology can begin to fail the very users who shaped it. The paper concludes that while the shift to the social model of disability produced meaningful progress, rhetorical closure around visual accessibility arrived before blind users’ needs were fully met. This uneven progress is even more pronounced in motor, cognitive, and neurodevelopmental accessibility, which remain largely unresolved.
