Disability and the Internet

Special issue of First Monday

Disability and the Internet in 2014: Where to now?

edited by Dr Katie Ellis & Dr Mike Kent Internet Studies, Curtin University

 

Earlier this decade, the emerging field of Disability Media began to focus on the Internet and people with disabilities. Books such as Paul T. Jaeger’s Disability and The Internet in 2012 and Disability and New Media by this issue’s editors in 2011 both extended earlier work in this field such as Goggin and Newell’s 2003 Digital Disability. This new focus incorporated changes to the environment with the hype around Web 2.0, the rise of social networks and the increasing prevalence of smartphone and other mobile devices to access the Internet, as well as the evolving legal environment around access to technology for people with disabilities.

 

As we approach the second half of this second decade of the twenty first century, this special issue of First Monday looks to bring together scholars in disability media and related fields to look at the contemporary internet and the challenges and opportunities it presents for people with disabilities.

 

Topics of interest include developments in a number of areas as they relate to people with disabilities. These might explore:

 

•             Smartphones and Tablet computing

•             Social Networks

•             Wearable Technology

•             The development and relevance of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0, now more than five years old.

•             The changing impacts of technology and access for different impairments

•             People with intellectual disabilities and access to the Internet

•             Challenges to universal design

•             eLearning

 

Researchers in a number of disciplines will be interested in this topic including:

•             Disability Media

•             media, communications and culture

•             Internet studies

•             Disability studies

•             Disability support workers in the community working with clients using the Internet and online

Author Guidlnes for First Monday can be found here: http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/about/submissions#onlineSubmissions

Papers are expected by 30 June 2014.

Please email submissions to the editors at m.kent@curtin.edu.au