Re-Imagining Accessibility In Participatory Culture
A Talk By Mark Willis
Massachusetts Institute of Technology – April 28
Media in Transition 5 Conference
Proposal Abstract (010507): This proposal explores cultural practices, both learned and improvised, that drive a blind writer's pursuit of lifelong learning, literacy, and access to media technology. Literacy and media accessibility for blind people is discussed most often in terms of enabling technologies, with little attention given to contending social, economic, and cultural forces that shape the development and use of such technologies. This talk asserts that: 1) people with disabilities are engaged actively in making adaptations and negotiating accommodations to gain access to media; and 2) the work of adaptation and accommodation itself represents a significant form of cultural production. From this disability perspective, the notion of participatory culture – cultural practices tooled by new digital media that promote the individual user's appropriation, manipulation, and redistribution of media content – opens a new frontier for re-imagining the means and meanings of accessibility. Without spurning the legal framework that supports accessibility, including fair use in copyright law and reasonable accommodation in disability law, this talk concludes that it is time to look beyond rights-based strategies for expanding accessibility. When we negotiate accessibility with the emerging generation of media producers, instead of making appeals to justice, we should appeal to their creativity and imagination.
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