Accessibility:
The Web, Multimedia, and the Virtual Body

Course information page

Course information		Instructor information
Course	E 388M	Instructor	John Slatin
Unique #
Classroom	FAC9	Office location	FAC 248
Day and Time	Fall 2002 TTh	Office hours	M-F By appointment
Class email	(Registered students only)	Office phone	495-4288
		Instructor's email	jslatin@mail.utexas.edu

Course description

The rhetorician Richard Lanham wrote (1993) that technology would recover the sensorium for rhetoric, reversing the enforced poverty of black-and-white that has characterized written and printed discourse for so long. And so it has: text has been joined by image, video, animation, and sound as routine elements of composition on the World Wide Web, which exploded into public consciousness just a few months after Lanham's Electronic Word was published

. For many authors and readers, the proliferation of multimedia is a wonderful thing, offering new tools and new media for communication and expression. For some, however, multimedia creates huge obstacles to understanding. The Deaf and hard-of-hearing lose critical material that is available only in auditory form. Readers who are blind or visually impaired miss vital visual cues; persons with limited use of their hands have difficulty manipulating online tools. People with cognitive impairments find it difficult to learn how sites are organized.

It turns out, then, that most of us make assumptions about the bodies of the people we imagine as our readers. The purpose of this course is to examine such assumptions, to understand how they are coded in our practice as authors and readers-and into the design of the software and hardware we increasingly use as the media for writing and reading.

Coursework

This course involves three major projects:

• Evaluation of a Web site that presents substantial accessibility problems.
• Proposal and rationale for redesigning the site evaluated in (1) above, and sample redesign.
• Web site using multimedia to support accessibility.

Besides these projects, students will

• Maintain an accessibility/disability log
• Make weekly contributions to discussion forums and shared bibliographies
• Document their learning using the Online Learning Record (OLR), which serves as the basis for evaluation.

Readings, etc.

(Note: this list is subject to change in order to take advantage of late-breaking "news.")

• Slatin, John, and Sharon Rush, Maximum Accessibility
• Chisholm, Wendy; et al.(eds.), Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, versions 1.0 and 2.0
• Hayles, N. Katherine How We Became Posthuman
• Keller, Helen Story of My Life
• Mehta, Ved Sound-Shadows of the New World
• Cniffel, James Slackjaw
• Brueggeman, Brenda Jo, "On (Almost) Passing"
• Davidson, Michael, "The Scandal of Speech in Deaf Poetry"
• Other materials as appropriate

Prerequisites and computer experience

This course assumes some prior experience with computers. Students should be familiar with word processing, electronic mail, and Web-browsing, and with at least basic Internet search techniques. Previous experience with multimedia authoring is neither assumed nor required, but is certainly welcome! Students should expect to spend a considerable amount of time outside of class, sitting in front of a computer.

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