Bridging the Disability Divide: A Framework for Smart Assistive Governance Tools for Persons with Disabilities

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-533-1_43How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Digital Divide; Persons with Disabilities; Smart Assistive Technologies; Inclusive Governance; E-Governance; AI; Universal Design; Accessibility

Abstract

The digital divide is a major social, economic, and political problem that makes life harder for people with disabilities (PwDs) than for other groups. E-government offers efficiency and openness, but its design often leads to a “disability divide” by excluding PwDs through non-inaccessible interfaces and a lack of alternative service delivery modes. This paper argues for a paradigm shift from retrofitted accessibility to a proactive, “accessibility-by-design” framework embedded within the essence of governance. We examine the transformative potential of emerging smart assistive technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) driven voice recognition, computer vision, haptic interfaces, and blockchain-based authentication—in fostering an inclusive governance ecosystem. This study employs a comprehensive policy analysis, a secondary literature review, and comparative case studies from India, Estonia, and the UK to identify significant technological implementations and systemic barriers. Our results show that smart assistive tools can make it much easier for people with disabilities to get around, be independent, and take part in civic life. The paper concludes with a proposed multi-stakeholder framework for disability-inclusive smart governance (DISG), which underscores universal design, multimodal interfaces, participatory policymaking, and comprehensive capacity-building initiatives to guarantee that no citizen is marginalised in the digital era.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Monika Kumari
AU  - Vikram Prashant
AU  - Annu Kumari
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/12/31
TI  - Bridging the Disability Divide: A Framework for Smart Assistive Governance Tools for Persons with Disabilities
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Smart Systems and Social Management (ICSSSM-2 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 728
EP  - 737
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-533-1_43
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-533-1_43
ID  - Kumari2025
ER  -