Tuesday 24 November 2020

Could COVID improve access?: Accessibility, remote working and pandemic

UK Disability History Month runs from 18th November to 20th December each year. Alice Bennett reflects on the digital shift forced by the pandemic in the light of this year's theme "Access: How far have we come? How far have we to go?"

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many social changes but one of the greatest has been the digital shift, as more people than ever study and work remotely. This shift online has not been limited to work but also extended to leisure, with live streamed concerts and stand up performances and increased online content from galleries and theatres, much of it free.

A rather opulent theatre... a bit of a fancier ambience than watching from home

The price of attendance and potential difficulty in travelling to venues is a barrier to attending events and activities for many people, but disproportionately impacts disabled people. The recent availability of so many performances and activities online not only helps to overcome the potential barrier of cost, but also the frequent inaccessibility of venues and transport. It also helps overcome other potential barriers - for example, being able to watch from home opens up live streamed performances to those with chronic pain or fatigue that prevents travel, it enables a good view for those unable to stand gigs, and provides a relaxed and controllable home atmosphere to those who find theatre venues stressful. Recorded National Theatre productions, films released early on platforms such as Amazon and streamed concerts all provide opportunities for a far wider audience to engage with these performances.

During lockdown, getting outside became far more difficult for everyone, although between issues of cost and accessibility of travel, and the accessibility of sites themselves, has meant natural beauty spots can be difficult to access for a great many. Wildlife webcams are not new, but received new attention in lockdown, as a way to facilitate lockdown nature watching - for example the webcams of the UK Wildlife Trusts, which let you stream footage of the natural world (including puffins, shown right, photo of from the UK Wildlife Trusts). Whilst these can benefit anyone in lockdown or otherwise unable to make the trip, the improvement and promotion of these remote means of accessing the natural world are again of particular importance or opening up opportunities for engagement with disabled audiences.

A puffin stands on a rock, contemplating whether or not to watch the Wildlife Trusts webcam

On a more local level, activities such as exercise classes, coffee mornings, music lessons and book clubs are no longer safe to hold in person. Many of these have gone digital, providing what they can online, both in terms of content and maintaining social contact for their users. Again this opens up possibilities for new audiences, for those previously unable to attend.

The shift online has not universally improved accessibility. The move to provide physical services virtually has highlighted the digital divide - the gap between those with reliable high speed internet provision and the technology to use digital tools effectively and those without reliable technology and internet access. Those unfamiliar with digital tools may be similarly excluded. Therefore although the greater online provision has enabled engagement for many more than previously, it has not enabled access for all.

Besides online provision of leisure activities, the pandemic has seen a great many people work remotely, often for the first time. Whilst this has meant the need to adjust to new ways of working, being able to work or study remotely opens opportunities to those with disabilities, removing potential barriers such as inaccessible buildings and difficulty commuting. Whilst this has eased lockdown for many, the sudden proliferation of online resources and working from home wherever possible has not been without comment and some resentment from the disability community. Why is the new accessibility being criticised? Well, the accessibility is not - but rather that it took a pandemic to make it happen.

Someone sat at a computer, lit only by their monitor and a rather distracting sunset through the window.

Many disabled people have had requests to work or study remotely (whether the remote aspect would be full or part time) refused, with individuals having been told that remote working would not be possible for that job or that course. Now, many of those same jobs and courses which could not be managed remotely have been shifted online. As these accommodations are made, there has been understandable anger from those previously denied them.

This topic has come up in the BBC Ouch! Corona pandemic podcast, a spin off from the Ouch! Disability reporting. In the first podcast of the series, broadcast on 29th March 2020, journalist and blogger Natasha Lipman commented:

“It's been very interesting seeing a lot of disabled people online talking about this, saying how people have lost their jobs or had to drop out of university or schools or not be able to get a job in the first place, and then within the space of a week or two remote working, flexible working. Online lectures have suddenly become a thing. So I think it's been something that a lot of people have been finding difficult.

What I've been saying for years is that there are an awful lot of jobs that can be done with more flexibility, and this doesn't just benefit disabled people, it can have huge benefits to a lot of people, but then of course in this situation there are a lot of people who don't have that luxury of being able to say okay, I'm going to keep working but work from home.”

In the second episode of the podcast (broadcast on 1st April 2020), this was also a subject for comment from Ellis Palmer, a producer on BBC NewsHour on the World Service:

“I actually think this crisis could throw up a really, really interesting thing for a lot of disabled people, which is we had to fight a lot of the time to get reasonable adjustments, but now a lot of non-disabled people are finding they need reasonable adjustments, laptops or whatever, to be able to work from home. And now they're realising kind of the wisdom of our fight. Hopefully there will be more of an acceptance of remote working, just spending a day in the office a week. So, I actually think the future of work post COVID-19 could be potentially advantageous for disabled people economically speaking.”

The situation is common across economically developed countries. The disability activist Imani Barbarin describes seeing a company publicizing their working from home provision during the pandemic - a company which has previously told her that working from home would be impossible. Her article outlining her anger at the situation appeared on 31st March 2020 in The Philadelphia Inquirer.

So will COVID change this? At this point, we don't know. It is too soon to predict the long term social impact of this pandemic. Enabling more widespread remote working could improve diversity, particularly opening up possibilities for work and study for those living with chronic illness or disability. With lockdowns creating enforced experiments on the possibilities of remote working, studying and wider engagement, COVID may have proved that more online access is possible than previously thought. It is tragic that it has taken a pandemic to push progress in accessibility, but hopefully, a more flexible and accessible culture or work, study and leisure activities can be a lasting legacy, long after COVID has gone.


If you found this article interesting, there's more like it in our free online Digital Wellbeing course.

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