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From Autonomy to Sovereignty - A New Telos for Socially Assistive Technology

JiWoong Jang, Patrick Carrington, Andrew Begel

Abstract

Social accessibility research faces a persistent tension: assistive technologies (AT) predominantly pursue independence, yet disabled people's experiences reveal rich preferences for interdependence. Our analysis of 90 papers from 2011-2025 uncovered that this stems from a deeper issue - which crystallized through dialogue with three bodies of theories: (1) self-determination theory (SDT), (2) symbolic interactionism, and (3) posthumanist perspectives and crip technoscience. SDT illuminates individual needs; symbolic interactionism addresses construction of social meaning and stigma; Posthumanist and crip technoscience together challenges normalcy, governance, and the human-machine boundary. Through their tensions, we identify relational sovereignty as an alternative telos - or goal - to autonomy. While our corpus equates autonomy with independence, sovereignty centers the power to choose between independence and interdependence. To operationalize this shift - from "Can they do it?" to "Do they get to decide?" - we introduce the Relational Sovereignty Matrix and four design interventions: (1) a sovereignty-centered reframing of SDT, (2) generative questions for justice-oriented reflection, (3) the idea of building through sovereign technical primitives, and (4) explicit consideration of power in AT design.

From Autonomy to Sovereignty - A New Telos for Socially Assistive Technology

Abstract

Social accessibility research faces a persistent tension: assistive technologies (AT) predominantly pursue independence, yet disabled people's experiences reveal rich preferences for interdependence. Our analysis of 90 papers from 2011-2025 uncovered that this stems from a deeper issue - which crystallized through dialogue with three bodies of theories: (1) self-determination theory (SDT), (2) symbolic interactionism, and (3) posthumanist perspectives and crip technoscience. SDT illuminates individual needs; symbolic interactionism addresses construction of social meaning and stigma; Posthumanist and crip technoscience together challenges normalcy, governance, and the human-machine boundary. Through their tensions, we identify relational sovereignty as an alternative telos - or goal - to autonomy. While our corpus equates autonomy with independence, sovereignty centers the power to choose between independence and interdependence. To operationalize this shift - from "Can they do it?" to "Do they get to decide?" - we introduce the Relational Sovereignty Matrix and four design interventions: (1) a sovereignty-centered reframing of SDT, (2) generative questions for justice-oriented reflection, (3) the idea of building through sovereign technical primitives, and (4) explicit consideration of power in AT design.
Paper Structure (68 sections, 5 figures, 2 tables)

This paper contains 68 sections, 5 figures, 2 tables.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Background and Related Works
  3. The Evolving Telos of Assistive Technology
  4. The Functional Independence Paradigm (Pre-2010s)
  5. The Social Turn (2010–2015)
  6. Toward Justice and Liberation (2015–Present)
  7. The Independence-Interdependence Complex
  8. The Turn to Interdependence
  9. Empirical Observations of the Complex
  10. Theoretical Resources for Reframing AT Goals
  11. The Self
  12. The Interaction
  13. The (Material) Body
  14. Posthumanist Perspectives
  15. Crip Technoscience
  16. ...and 53 more sections

Figures (5)

  • Figure 1: Stages of the Methodological Process: From keyword searches, corpus curation, and multi-stage synthesis.
  • Figure 2: Illustration of process to obtain curated corpus for analysis.
  • Figure 3: Steps of Systematic Dataset Construction
  • Figure 4: Illustration of the constructivist grounded theory analysis process (Stage 1): we move from conceptual extraction to thematic synthesis.
  • Figure 5: The Relational Sovereignty Matrix: The left column (Conditional) captures what is traditionally experienced as dependence---a lack of power to set one's own terms. The goal of sovereignty-oriented design is movement rightward (toward Recognized Sovereignty).