Digital Disability

The Social Construction of Disability in New Media

By (author) Gerard Goggin, Christopher Newell

Publication date:

23 November 2002

Length of book:

224 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9780742518438

Media representation of and for the disabled has been recharged in recent years with the expansion of new media worldwide. Interactive digital communications—such as the Internet, new varieties of voice and text telephones, and digital broadcasting—have created a need for a more innovative understanding of new media and disability issues. This engaging analysis offers a global perspective on how people with disabilities are represented as users, consumers, viewers, or listeners of new media, by policymakers, corporations, programmers, and the disabled themselves.

Part 1 Preface
Part 2 Technologies of Disability
Chapter 3 Encountering Technology, Media and Culture
Chapter 4 Disability in its Social Context
Part 5 Networks of Disability
Chapter 6 Holding the Line: Telecommunications and Disability
Chapter 7 Disability on the Digital Margins: Convergence and the Construction of Disability
Part 8 New Mediations of Disability
Chapter 9 Getting the Picture on Disability: Digital Broadcasting Futures
Chapter 10 Blindspots on the Internet
Chapter 11 Cultures of Digital Disability
Part 12 Politics of Disabling Digitization
Chapter 13 Rewiring Disability

An important contribution to disability studies literature and lays the groundwork for more work on technology and disability issues. Graduate students, disability studies scholars, and those exploring the sociology of digital technology will benefit from this book. Recommended.