Habilitation and assistive devices for persons with disabilities: a new approach to respect for human rights and inclusion

Vollständiger Abstract

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In recent years, the development of assistive technologies has profoundly changed the idea of what it means to be human and what humans are capable of, in particular for persons with disabilities; the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) highlights that disability is a social construction. New concepts have been developed, such as empowerment, enabling, inclusion, habilitation, and human rights, that have changed the meaning of making tools available to encourage full participation, hoping to solve challenges of today, such as barriers, obstacles, and discrimination. The development of assistive devices has reconfigured the limits of the human body for all persons and has made it clear that persons with functional limitations can overcome the body's hereditary materiality limits, activating enabling and resilient factors that configure a different normality of “doing”. The post-human perspectives question traditional rehabilitation forms, which are no longer centered on recovering a lost or limited function according to a predefined model of “normality” and health (ableism), but reformulating the idea of how a person can function. It is from the analysis of the human being’s functioning profile that new forms of protection for persons with disabilities and their human rights can be explored, such as the customized participatory projects envisaged by the Italian welfare reform legislation. In this context, Article 26 of the UNCRPD proposes a new approach to support the human rights and inclusion of persons with disabilities. Assistive devices are no longer a tool linked to the health sector, but rather allow us to expand the ability to participate and broaden functional capabilities and should therefore be provided in a social context, as useful tools to achieve full citizenship.