Digital Accessibility and Intersectional Discrimination
Intersectional discrimination recognizes social disadvantages occurring at the nexus of multiple social identities. An intersectional perspective provides a powerful lens for examining states’ obligations to ensure access to information and communications technology (ICT) across disability, gender, and socioeconomic status. Intersectional barriers can include accessibility, cost and affordability, social exclusion and online aggression, and learning digital skills. Our findings have particular relevance for the Global South due to the close link between poverty and disability, growing general prevalence of poverty, and increasing income disparities between the Global South and Global North (Hickel, 2017; Moyo & Ferguson, 2009). Our findings also illustrate the complex relationships and the need for new policies and programs that take into account intersectionality when adopting ICT as a tool for sustainable development.