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This open access book examines how technology shapes public, social, health, and welfare services, with a particular focus on the experiences of people with disabilities. Bringing together empirical research and theoretical analysis from across Nordic welfare contexts, it investigates the sociotechnical relationships that influence care practices, service delivery, and everyday life in digitally mediated environments.
Organised into three parts, the book first explores how knowledge production, cultural frameworks, and welfare imaginaries shape understandings of care and technology. It then analyses the role of technology in health and social service delivery across the life course, including communication support, assistive technologies, digital participation, and transitions to employment. The final part examines user‑centred design and social inclusion, highlighting co‑creation processes, accessibility in higher education, and the organisational conditions that influence digital transformation in disability welfare services. Across these chapters, contributors draw on science and technology studies, co‑creation, relational welfare, and disability research to illuminate how technologies are implemented, negotiated, and experienced in practice. A timely reflection on the evolving relationships between humans and technology in disability services, this edited collection is of interest to researchers and students in social work, disability studies, health sciences, education, STS, and public policy, as well as practitioners in primary healthcare, social services, and welfare organisations.
Heidi Pedersen is Associate Professor in the Department of Social Work at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). Interested in disability, welfare technology, and user involvement, her work focuses on accessibility to education, assistive devices for activity, identity formation, universal design, welfare services, and practice development in social work.
Ingunn Fylkesnes is Associate Professor in the Department of Social Work at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). With a back in physiotherapy, health science, and sociology, she does research on disabled children and adolescents.
Jens Ineland is an Associate Professor of Social Work at Umeå University, Sweden. His research focuses on how policy changes and organizational rule and norm systems influence the everyday lives of people with intellectual disabilities
| Publication Date: | 18 January 2027 |
| Publisher: | Springer Nature Switzerland |
| Imprint: | Palgrave Macmillan |
| ISBN-13: | 9783032372208 |
| Format: | Hardback |