Full Description
Rhetorical Accessability is the first text to bring the fields of technical communication and disability studies into conversation. The two fields also share a pragmatic foundation in their concern with accommodation and accessibility, that is, the material practice of making social and technical environments and texts as readily available, easy to use, and/or understandable as possible to as many people as possible, including those with disabilities. Through its concern with the pragmatic, theoretically grounded work of helping users interface effectively and seamlessly with technologies, the field of technical communication is perfectly poised to put the theoretical work of disability studies into practice. In other words, technical communication could ideally be seen as a bridge between disability theories and web accessibility practices. While technical communicators are ideally positioned to solve communication problems and to determine the best delivery method, those same issues are compounded when they are viewed through the dual lens of accessibility and disability. With the increasing use of wireless, expanding global marketplaces, increasing prevalence of technology in our daily lives, and ongoing changes of writing through and with technology, technical communicators need to be acutely aware of issues involved with accessibility and disability. This collection will advance the field of technical communication by expanding the conceptual apparatus for understanding the intersections among disability studies, technical communication, and accessibility and by offering new perspectives, theories, and features that can only emerge when different fields are brought into conversation with one another and is the first text to bring the fields of technical communication and disability studies into conversation with one another.
Contents
Introduction
Lisa Meloncon
CHAPTER 1. Embracing Interdependence: Technology Developers, Autistic Users, and Technical Communicators
Kimberly Elmore
CHAPTER 2. Designing for People Who Do Not Read Easily
Caroline Jarrett, Janice (Ginny) Redish, and Kathryn Summers
CHAPTER 3. Toward a Theory of Technological Embodiment
Lisa Meloncon
CHAPTER 4. Supercrips Don't Fly: Technical Communication to Support Ordinary Lives of People With Disabilities
Margaret Gutsell and Kathleen Hulgin
CHAPTER 5. The Care and Feeding of the D-Beast: Metaphors of the Lived Experience of Diabetes
Lora Arduser
CHAPTER 6. Accessibility and the Web Design Student
Elizabeth Pass
CHAPTER 7. Accessibility Challenges for Visually Impaired Students and Their Online Writing Instructors
Sushil K. Oswal and Beth L. Hewett
CHAPTER 8. Disability, Web Standards, and the Majority World
Sarah Lewthwaite and Henny Swan
CHAPTER 9. Web Accessibility Statements: Connecting Professional Writing, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Burkean Rhetoric
Antoinette Larkin
CHAPTER 10. Accessibility as Context: The Legal, Fiscal, and Social Imperative to Deliver Inclusive e-Content
Lisa Pappas
CHAPTER 11. Resources
Allison Maloney
Meet the Contributors
Index
