Assistive Technologies in Dance Education for Individuals with Disabilities: Applications and Limitations

This research paper assesses the barriers individuals with disabilities face in accessing dance education and investigates the potential for advanced assistive technologies to help them surmount these barriers. It focuses on three specific emerging technologies—motion capture, virtual/augmented reality, and haptic feedback devices—and evaluates their potential to make dance education more inclusive for disabled dancers, as well as their limitations, drawing on a wide range of case studies. It concludes that all three technologies could significantly erode training barriers, both by providing dancers with new tools for learning and self expression and by helping dance educators better understand and meet the needs of disabled dancers. However, it acknowledges that certain technologies may be better suited for dancers with certain types of disabilities, with motion capture more likely to aid dancers with mobility disabilities and haptic feedback devices more likely to aid dancers with sensory disabilities. Furthermore, it recognizes that, despite their considerable potential to erode training barriers, assistive technologies offer less promise when it comes to reducing the logistical and attitudinal barriers faced by disabled dancers. Finally, it warns against the use of assistive technologies to erase perceived imperfections, underscoring that these technologies should be embraced as tools for learning and expression rather than to “help” disabled dancers to conform to ableist standards.