Automated decision-making, digital inclusion and intersectional disabilities

Abstract

Disability is a long-standing area of digital inclusion finally emerging out of the shadows. In this article, we argue that a critical understanding of digital media from the perspectives of disability and intersectionality will offer generative insights for framing the terms and agenda of digital inclusion in the next decade. With a focus on the area of automated decision-making (ADM) in social and welfare services, we reflect upon the controversial 2015–2020 Australian government programme widely known as ‘Robodebt’ that recovers putative debts from support recipients – and we discuss implications for Indigenous Australians with disabilities in particular. We contrast the ‘Robodebt’ programme with explicit digital inclusion policy on disability in Australia, noting that such digital inclusion policy does not specifically acknowledge yet alone address ADM or other aspects of automation. Here, there is a major opportunity for overdue acknowledgement of disability and intersectionality to spur and shape an affirmative and just agenda on people with disabilities’ digital inclusion, ADM and other associated areas of automated technologies.