Technology use and non-use by low-income blind people in India

Low-income blind people in India face a complex array of socioeconomic barriers, language constraints and infrastructural challenges that impede their use of assistive technologies that are primarily designed for blind communities in the developed world. The environment of constraint and disability has led low-income blind people to appropriate general-purpose technologies as assistive technologies, and use them to orchestrate new coproduction, consumption and sharing practices to address their educational needs. Low-income blind people also use mainstream social media platforms not only to access instrumental information and entertainment, but also to demonstrate their technology acumen to the society, and build meaningful connections with both blind and sighted communities.