Post Three: Access and Participatory Media

It is significant to differentiate disability from impairment as the former is socially constructed to justify the unnecessary barriers and exclusion of those who possess impairments (Ellis & Goggin 2015, p. 78). The fluid nature of the terms emphasise that disability occurs when infrastructure does not accommodate for an impairment and thus, does not enable the user (Ellis & Goggin 2015, p. 78). This ableism should be corrected by the technology corporations who developed the infrastructure; however, it is those with disabilities who are ensuring greater accessibility for themselves by crowdfunding improvements (Ellis & Goggin 2015, p. 85). It is proposed that crowdfunding can afford participation opportunities for people with disabilities (Ellis & Goggin 2015, p. 84) but it should not be the responsibility of subaltern counterpublics (Sommerfeldt 2013, p. 282) to ensure their own inclusion by providing the “expertise, labour and funds for technology creation and redesign efforts” (Ellis & Goggin 2015, p. 85). Technology corporations, such as Twitter, must understand that contemporary users should expect content that is “designed to be accessible without individuals needing to identify their particular needs” (Arthur 2017, para. 4) and therefore, features that increase user compatibility (such as alternative text) should become a necessity of web design.

Additionally, participatory culture has allowed greater acknowledgement of disability occur in digital media. A participatory culture is defined as an environment in which “members believe their contributions matter, and feel some degree of social connection with one another” (Jenkins et al. 2007 cited in Jenkins 2015, p. 4) and this has allowed people with disabilities to consume, exchange and produce digital content meaningfully. It has been proposed that this participatory digital media is an extension of the public sphere (Forde et al. 2002 cited in Ellis & Goggin 2015, p. 79) but as such media is often excluded from the dominant discourse, it may be more accurate that these new spaces (Ellis & Goggin 2015, p. 80) contribute to the formation of smaller, public sphericules of “parallel discursive arenas” (Sommerfeldt 2013, p. 282). For example, Ouch! has been criticised for marginalising the expert perspective of writers with disability as they do not feature their articles in the mainstream BBC discourse (Ellis & Goggin 2015, p. 81). It is thus evident that disability communities are often excluded from the public sphere and that this “barrier to participation is not [necessarily because of] the technology but the kinds of privilege that are often ignored in meritocratic discourse” (Jenkins 2015, p. 22).

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Arthur, L. 2017 Why alt text matters, UTS, Sydney, viewed 16 August 2019, <https://futures.uts.edu.au/blog/2017/06/01/alt-text-matters/ >.

Caralyn, G. 2018, Writing Accessible Web Content, Sparkbox, viewed, 16 August 2019, <https://seesparkbox.com/foundry/writing_accessible_web_content >.

Ellis, K. & Goggin, G. 2015, ‘Disability Medi Participation: Opportunities, Obstacles and Politics’, Media International Australia, vol. 151, no. 1, pp. 178-188.

Jenkins, H. 2015, ‘Defining Participatory Culture’, in Jenkins, H., Ito, M. & Boyd, D. (eds) Participatory culture in a networked era: a conversation on youth, learning, commerce, and politics, Polity Press, Cambridge, pp. 1-31.

Sommerfeldt, E.J. 2013, ‘The civility of social capital: Public relations in the public sphere, civil society, and democracy’, Public Relations Review, vol. 39, no. 4, pp. 280-289.