The research project 'Digital participation of young people with disabilities' investigates how young people with disabilities use and live with digital technologies. Louise has several years of research experience from the field and has e.g. focused on how technologies influence the learning of people with disabilities. She explains how she and Stine were introduced by a colleague and decided to work together on a project about digital participation among young people with disabilities.

Stine elaborates:  

“In my experience, researchers tend to keep making interviews with children from the same socioeconomic background again and again, because their middleclass parents sign them up for the studies. I want to come across that bias, so that was my first entrance to this research field. At the same time, I became aware that children and young people with disabilities is highly underrepresented in research in general. Our common colleague suggested that Louise and I should meet. So we made an online date where we quickly realised that we can compliment each other's disciplines really well. We are both interested in how technologies are used by people with physiological and cognitive disabilities, but also how this group of people are met and represented in the medias. We both come from great fields, and we will try to increase it to primarily the use of digital technologies.”   

What is the aim of the project?

"Our fundamental research question is how young people with disabilities use digital technologies in their everyday lives," says Stine.  

Louise elaborates: 

“Our plan is to work towards forming an application at the end of this year, so we can continue our research project in 2024. We want to build a professional and academic network within this field of research. More specifically, we have reached out to several researchers, who will provide us with valuable insights. The aim of building a professional network is also to mature our application process.”  

What initiatives have you been able to develop through the collaboration with SHAPE? 

Stine and Louise are planning a symposium concerned with the theme of their project:

"The symposium will provide a framework for building an academic network which is such an important part of this project. Therefore, we have invited a different researchers from both Denmark, Sweden and the UK, who will share and discuss their research. The symposium will take place on November 10 in Aarhus.”   

What are your future ambitions for the project?

“First of all, our hope is to concretize our project within the following months. The development of a network, which is the aim of our symposium, is to get to know the researchers in this field, but it is also to widen our network in patient organizations, where my network is at a minimum now. It will be an ongoing process throughout the next year, where we will prioritize the time to develop the network as well as our project. One of my upcoming tasks is to do an interview with two young women, who both suffer from disability muscular dystrophy, about their use of social media.

To sum it up, we develop professional network, write applications, and evolve specific initiatives, that will widen our understanding of the field and our fundamental research question which is how young people with disabilities use digital technologies in their everyday lives,” Stine explains.  

Both Stine and Louise emphasize the collaboration with SHAPE as beneficial for the project: 

“It has given us the time and opportunity to widen our professional and academic network, which we need to attrack PhD-students and postdocs to our project,” says Louise.  

“Yes, and we have a responsibility to make this project grow”, Stine elaborates.  

At the end of the interview, Stine and Louise reflect on the possible contributions of this research project:  

“There is a lot of research within this field, but it’s a bit fragmented. Hopefully, our symposium will have a unifying effect on this,” says Louise.  

“Yes! Internationally, there is a lot of research, but in Denmark we see a more general unequal agenda. But we should mention a conference arranged by Save the Children recently followed by a Save The Children/Rambøll report, which addressed this specific topic, so hopefully, we’ll see more of this in the nearest future.”, Stine concludes.