[ecrea] Media, Disability, and the Politics of Participation

*Restricted Access***

*Media, Disability, and the Politics of Participation***

/Elizabeth Ellcessor/

"/Restricted Access /transforms our understanding of what 'access' means
in an age when so much writing on new media fetishizes
participation. Elizabeth Ellcessor reveals the ways in which ability,
culture, and technology are all entangled in questions of accessibility.
Timely and sophisticated, Ellcessor’s book is a major advance in media
studies and disability studies, and will also be of great interest to
scholars in policy."-Jonathan Sterne,author of /MP3: The Meaning of a
Format/

While digital media can offer many opportunities for civic and cultural
participation, this technology is not equally easy for everyone to use.
Hardware, software, and cultural expectations combine to make some
technologies an easier fit for some bodies than for others. A YouTube
video without closed captions or a social network site that is
incompatible with a screen reader can restrict the access of users who
are hard of hearing or visually impaired. Often, people with
disabilities require accommodation, assistive technologies, or other
forms of aid to make digital media accessible—useable—for them.

/Restricted Access/ investigates digital media accessibility—the
processes by which media is made usable by people with particular
needs—and argues for the necessity of conceptualizing access in a way
that will enable greater participation in all forms of mediated culture.
Drawing on disability and cultural studies, Elizabeth Ellcessor uses an
interrogatory framework based around issues of regulation, use, content,
form, and experience to examine contemporary digital media. Through
interviews with policy makers and accessibility professionals, popular
culture and archival materials, and an ethnographic study of internet
use by people with disabilities, Ellcessor reveals the assumptions that
undergird contemporary technologies and participatory cultures.
/Restricted Access/ makes the crucial point that if digital media open
up opportunities for individuals to create and participate, but that
technology only facilitates the participation of those who are already
privileged, then its progressive potential remains unrealized.
Engagingly written with powerful examples, Ellcessor demonstrates the
importance of alternate uses, marginalized voices, and invisible
innovations in the context of disability identities to push us to
rethink digital media accessibility.

New York University Press

Postmillennial Pop

March 2016 272pp 9781479853434 PB £21.99now only £17.59* when you quote
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