Technologies designed to 'assist' users with and without disabilities, such as computer interfaces, act as mediators of barriers in Digital Cultures. At the same time, these technologies, as 'assistive media', emerge into a pre-existing technological environment and add an additional level of mediation to human-machine interaction. Drawing on examples rooted in a diverse range of fields - from engineering to medical research to gaming culture - the contributors to this volume each provide a unique perspective on assistance, situated at the intersection of media studies and disability studies.

Philipp Macele, born in 1990, works as a technological manager for Visual Arts in Hamburg. He studied cultural studies (BA) at Leuphana Universität Lüneburg, and media studies at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. From 2018 to 2022 he was a research assistant in the project »Assistive Media« at Leuphana-Universität, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).