Fostering Inclusive Technologies: Being Alongside Care in the Workplace

The potential of technologies for fostering inclusive employment of people with disabilities is increasingly being explored. Despite this potential, ‘inclusive’ technologies in practice often produce further, unintended exclusions for people with disabilities. To mitigate the risk of such exclusions through technology, striking a balance between the commitments of the people involved in developing and introducing such technologies and the in- or exclusionary consequences that emerge in a specific situation is crucial. We pose that matters of care can be a useful conceptual repertoire to help strike such a balance. Reporting on a reflexive evaluation of two pilots experimenting with technologies for inclusion, we show how care was enacted in two layers of care; the care ‘out there’ as mobilized within these pilots and the care we as researchers bring to the setting. We show how the commitments of all those involved in the pilots and the reflexive evaluation interacted and evolved in- and between these layers. We introduce the notion of being alongside to help us conceptualize how caring practices can flourish in the two layers of care. Throughout, we illustrate how our approach, based on reflexive monitoring in action, made being alongside possible for both pilot actors and us as researchers.