The world is already digitally transformed, but for many women and gender-diverse people with disabilities, that transformation has come with new forms of control.
For Karuna, who is gender diverse with multiple disabilities the promise of technology has often meant something very different from what policymakers describe.
While digital systems are framed as tools for inclusion and efficiency, in their experience, they frequently operate as new instruments of control, where systems, not victim-survivors, decide whose experiences are recorded, redacted, or believed.
“It can be really difficult to get the evidence you need,” they say. “Institutions won’t hand over the key aspects of the records and things like that.”
Karuna has lived through institutional abuse and seen firsthand how digital processes within health and education systems can replicate the same power dynamics that caused harm in the first place. When online services store, interpret, or share records without consent, they can silence survivors and distribute institutional offender narratives while appearing neutral or even compassionate.
Karuna says “The government has stated, ‘We’ve listened to people with disabilities who have told us they don’t want to retell their traumatic experiences.’ The government has then used these consumer voices as a justification to attempt to take away privacy by placing records online without consumer choice and without substantiating the data in the records.”
“It’s ignoring the fact that lived experience knowledge has demonstrated that the way institutions misrepresent consumer experiences and misrepresent medical data is a significant contributor to trauma.”
For Karuna, this loss of control is not a technical issue; it’s a form of digital violence. When the state or an institution determines what version of your experience exists digitally without substantiation, consultation and consent, the harm isn’t just procedural. It’s deeply personal.
Technology, they argue, amplifies existent inequalities, bureaucratic and structural violence.
“If something is happening in one of those spaces, it’s more likely to happen in the other,” they say. “Offenders will use institutional processes to stop disclosure of abuse.”
When systems go online, those same institutional patterns simply move with them. Bureaucratic opacity becomes digital opacity; trauma-informed policy becomes data surveillance. For women and gender-diverse people with disabilities, this translates into a double burden, disbelieved in person, and now digitally disempowered.
“Even when I claimed I feared for my and my son’s life, initially, services and the justice system ignored my claims and didn’t bother to check if what I said was true. For example, this included ignoring an existing intervention order and a criminal finding by a judge” they said.
Karuna points out that while governments and platforms talk about “online safety,” their actions often reinforce paternalism instead of agency. Karuna says the government’s attempts to weaken the Freedom of Information Laws are one such example.
“Even policies that aim to protect the government can erase everyday people’s agency,” they say. “Predominantly, the Government doesn’t effectively utilise consultations with people most negatively affected by their actions, such as young people, refugees, and people with disabilities, who rely on the government to uphold transparency and integrity.”
Safety for the State and institutions, Karuna explains, should never come at the cost of autonomy for those who have been disadvantaged by the State and institutions. For many victims of institutional abuse and system failures who live with disabilities, online connection is not a luxury, it’s a means of survival and solidarity.
“Online research writing groups have given me opportunities I’d never have had otherwise,” they say. “It’s a way to counteract exclusion.”
The irony, Karuna reflects, is that the same systems that claim to facilitate participation are the ones that most often hinder consumers ‘ capacity to participate in disclosures.
The rhetoric of convenience, “you don’t have to retell your experience,” hides the deeper issue of the State and institutions removing consumer rights to choose whether and how their experiences are shared, while also limiting consumer access to data outlining State and institutional decision-making processes.
“Digital inclusion without consent isn’t inclusion,” Karuna says. “It’s another way of taking power away.”
That’s why they believe co-design is not just good practice, but essential. Trauma-informed design must go beyond accessibility checklists; it must embed accountability, transparency, and human rights into every stage of decision-making.
Karuna’s experience is a reminder that digital spaces are never neutral. They reflect hierarchies that exist offline, unless those hierarchies are deliberately dismantled.
This 16 Days of Activism, WWDA calls for governments, platforms, and institutions to design for safety, not control, to work with women and gender-diverse people with disabilities. Co-design must be standard. Trauma-informed systems must protect, not re-traumatise.
Digital technology should never be another barrier to safety or freedom. As Karuna’s experience shows, real inclusion begins when systems that store personal data learn to listen and apply human rights.
