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jp 5 ny

David Wästerfors

Professor

jp 5 ny

Taking ownership of gaming and disability

Author

  • David Wästerfors
  • Kristofer Hansson

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