Inclusion interrupted: Lessons from the making of a digital assistant by and for people with disability

Abstract

Participatory approaches including co-design are seen as a means to address some of the challenges digital government poses for people with disability, such as unequal access and poor technological design. Yet co-design principles are rarely practiced in a meaningful way for people with disability, resulting in digital government systems that are obstructive and inaccessible to many. This paper explores the opportunities and challenges of disability inclusion through a qualitative case study of participatory digital government in Australia. It centres on the case of “Nadia”, an artificially intelligent virtual assistant created in 2016 through a co-design approach that ultimately ended in failure, as the project never progressed beyond the design stage. Based on research involving interviews with technology developers, government representatives, and people with disability who had input into the design of Nadia, the article makes three main contributions. First, it clarifies conceptually the importance of inclusion as a process, rather than an outcome, of digital government, reframing design as a matter of inclusion. Second, in examining why the project failed, the paper identifies aspects of digital government culture, organization, and practice that impede disability co-design, namely, a lack of institutionalized support and resistance to sharing power. Third, it highlights disability as an area for exploring new possibilities with technology and its limitations, showing the significant role that disabled people play in shaping technology and its advancements.