David Wästerfors
Professor
Taking ownership of gaming and disability
Author
Summary, in English
Gaming among young people with disabilities is often understood within a habilitation frame, as if video and computer games primarily should help to exercise and ‘improve’. Little is known about how these games are used within a private frame, and how young people with disabilities operate their gaming as concrete persons rather than as treatment-receiving clients. Through the use of stories, descriptions, and demonstrations from Swedish youth and young adults with disabilities (muscle diseases, cerebral palsy, and Asperger’s syndrome), we explore these gamers’ practical maneuvers, verbal accounts, and biographical-narrative concerns in relation to digital games. As they strive to bypass or overcome digital inaccessibility, various challenges find their way into their gaming practices, not only to complicate, distract, or disturb them but also to give them extra meaning. Gamer–game identifications turn multifaceted, with disabilities serving as paths both around and into the games’ ‘magical circles’. We suggest partly new concepts – beyond a habilitation frame – to capture how young people struggle to take ownership of gaming and disability: engrossment maintenance, vicarious gamers and biographical as well as situational refuge.
Department/s
- Division of Ethnology
- The Cultural Studies Group of Neuroscience
- Critical studies in (dis)ability & illness
- Sociology
Publishing year
2017-10-21
Language
English
Pages
1143-1160
Publication/Series
Journal of Youth Studies
Volume
20
Issue
9
Document type
Journal article
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Topic
- Sociology (excluding Social Work, Social Psychology and Social Anthropology)
- Ethnology
Keywords
- disability
- youth
- video and computer games
- accessibility
- engrossment
- identity
- biographical
- situational refuge
- Disability
- youth
- video and computer games
- accessibility
- engrossment
- identity
- biographical and situational refuge
Status
Published
Research group
- The Cultural Studies Group of Neuroscience
- Critical studies in (dis)ability & illness
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 1469-9680