Edited by Lieketseng Ned, Minerva Rivas Velarde, Satendra Singh, Leslie Swartz, Karen Soldatić.
This open-accessed Chapter explores the rapid expansion of automated decision-making technologies in the disability context, emphasising the significant—and underexamined—influence of market forces. The research spotlights the mental health sector, given the substantial private sector push to digitise various parts of mental health service provision. Yet, the discussion is relevant to a range of disability contexts in which efforts have been made to automate care and support. The Chapter highlights gaps in traditional accountability mechanisms to better align private interests with the public good, and briefly touches on efforts to promote ‘algorithmic accountability’ in the disability context, including through care ethics, rights-based strategies, disability-inclusive public procurement, leadership by disabled people and mental health service users, and critical accounts of disability-related data in the information economy. The Chapter seeks to build on the emerging contribution of disability studies to the law and politics of automated forms of care and support.