Perpetual Contact

Perpetual contact is a sociological term coined by James Katz and Mark Aakhus to describe the state, enabled by mobile phones and later by ubiquitous internet messaging, in which people maintain constant availability to their social network regardless of physical location. For families with a disabled member who relies on a primary caregiver, perpetual contact is both a support (a caregiver can always be reached for 'help getting un-stuck') and a load (the caregiver is expected to be always reachable). The concept is useful for accessibility research because it highlights that the value of a communication device is not only the interactions it enables, but the *ambient security* of knowing that help is a call away — a benefit that persists even when the device is rarely actually used.