Wavepad

Audacity

“As disabled people, we are forever being told that there is something about our bodies that is lacking, that is less than. Disability pride says it doesn’t have to be that way. Disability pride says that we have minority bodies, but we don’t have - we refuse to have - tragic bodies.” (as quoted in Shew, 2020, p. 42)

Scavenger Hunt

New Media

• “The new media operate with different principles than the broadcast media that dominated American politics for so long” including “access, participation, reciprocity, and peer-to-peer rather than one-to-many communication” (p. 219).
• “A changed sense of community, a greater sense of participation, less dependence on official expertise, and a greater trust in collaborative problem solving” (p. 220).

Digital Technologies

1. Download the PDF or Word version of the syllabus onto your device.
2. Highlight three times the word “access” appears. Does the meaning shift in different contexts?
3. Underline, circle, or otherwise mark a word or statement that you don’t understand.
4. Name 2 ways you can participate in the class.
5. Name 3 different formats your final project can take.
6. Place a symbol (star, asterisk, arrow, heart, etc.) beside a topic you’re looking forward to learning about.
7. Add a comment/note beside an activity or assignment that makes you anxious or worried.
8. When is the Project Proposal due?
9. Highlight an activity that you’re curious about or have questions about.
10. In your opinion, what is the most unlikely or unexpected word in this document?

Course Description

Course Objectives

• Identify the affordances and constraints of media platforms and technologies, with attention to access and disability justice and reflect critically on the labour and ethics of digital making.
• Gain proficiency with two or more digital storytelling platforms or practices.
• Develop an understanding of the social and techno-scientific innovation that proceeds from and accounts for body-mind difference.
• Craft stories about specific digital devices, linking objects to broader global, political, cultural, and societal narratives about disability, materiality, and capital.
• Generate interactive narratives using play and collaborative storytelling to explore a contemporary issue relevant to disability justice.
• Identify the digital divide and its impact on disabled people related to inequitable economic, physical, geographic, and infrastructure access to digital resources.
• Interrogate and analyze the intersections of medicine/psychiatry and digital media.
• Become familiar with the discourses of new media, crip technoscience, cripping digital media, and critical game design and apply them in cultural and social environments.

Method of Instruction/Teaching

Accessibility Statement

Assignments and Evaluation

Assignment guidelines

• Please note that for written assignments, the font Arial size 12 is preferred.
• Assignments must be submitted to the appropriate drop box on D2L as attachments.
• A note on late marks: I don’t do them. I’m happy to give you extensions (working within the limits of the university and the deadlines we have from the institution). In some cases, extensions may not be possible (for example, the final project has to be submitted in time for the TA and I to mark them before our own deadlines for submitting grades to the university). Please contact me if there’s more we can do to help you, and I will try to accommodate, as long as it won’t be extremely hard on me or our teaching assistant. We want to take care of each other. If you do need an extension, please tell me, but remember that I don’t need to know why. It’s not an instructor’s place to assess whether or not a request is valid. Furthermore, your personal life is none of my business, and I’m not here to surveil you. I’m here to teach you. So let me know what you need, and I’ll tell you if it’s possible, and if not, we can try to come up with other solutions or compromises.

COURSE MANAGEMENT POLICIES

Academic Integrity

• A grade reduction for the work, ranging up to an including a zero on the work (minimum penalty for graduate work is a zero on the work)
• A grade reduction in the course greater than a zero on the work.  (Note that this penalty can only be applied to course components worth 10% or less, and any additional penalty cannot exceed 10% of the final course grade. Students must be given prior notice that such a penalty will be assigned (e.g. in the course outline or on the assignment handout)
• An F in the course
• More serious penalties up to and including expulsion from the University

Unauthorized Use of Intellectual Property:

• Slides
• Lecture notes
• Presentation materials used in and outside of class
• Lab manuals
• Course packs
• Exams

Academic Accommodation of Students with Disabilities

Direct Links to Other Important Toronto Metropolitan University policies:

RESOURCES

Writing

• Please access the Toronto Metropolitan Student Learning Centre (SLC) for online writing support. The SLC has several online resources available here: http://www.ryerson.ca/studentlearningsupport/online-resources/index.html
• You can make online appointments for writing support by following the link below. Appointments fill up fast, so do book early. SLC offers three types of appointments: English Speaking and Listening, Grammar/Supported Self-Editing, and Academic Writing: http://www.ryerson.ca/studentlearningsupport/writing-support/index.html

Access

• Centre for Student Development and Counselling (virtual counselling appointments): https://www.ryerson.ca/student-wellbeing/counselling/
• Online OCR Tool (converts handwritten notes or assignments into digital text): http://apps.library.ryerson.ca/ocr/
• Accessible Format Production (requires formal registration with Accommodation Services. Please contact Adan if you are having difficulty accessing the course material and are not eligible to use this service): https://library.ryerson.ca/services/disabilities/accessibility/
• Accommodation Services (Fall intake deadline: October 22, 2021): https://www.ryerson.ca/accommodations/

Student Advocacy and Support Groups

• RyeACCESS: http://www.rsuonline.ca/ryeaccess
• BIPOC Student Collective: http://www.rsuonline.ca/bipoc-students-collective
• Centre for Safer Sex and Sexual Violence Support http://www.rsuonline.ca/csssvs (support line for survivors of sexual violence to access peer support: #416-260-0100)
• RyePRIDE http://www.rsuonline.ca/ryepride

Part 1: Introduction to Disability and Digital Media

Week 1, September 7-10: Introduction: Affordances, Constraints, Access, and Harm

• Assigned media: Johanna Hedva “Sick Woman Theory,” Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha “So Much Time Spent in Bed” and “For Badass Disability Justice, Working-Class and Poor-Led Models of Sustainable Hustling for Liberation”

Week 2, September 13-17: Screen Media Cultures

• Assigned media: Imani Barbarin, TikTok video on disability representation, Aimi Hamraie and Kelly Fritsch “Crip Technoscience Manifesto”

Week 3, September 20-24: The Materiality of Media

• Assigned media: Toby Miller “The Price of Popular Media is Paid by the Effluent Citizen,” Jasbur Puar “Preface: Hands Up, Don’t Shoot!” excerpt, Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario “Permanent Online Landlord and Tenant Board Hearings Are Having Devastating Consequences,” Erin Knight “If a crisis like COVID-19 hasn't pushed government to take action to improve broadband access, what can?”

Part 2: Crip Making

Week 4, September 27-October 1: Image Workshop

• Assigned media: choose two (2) photo essays from the list provided on D2L
• Assignment Deadline: Project Proposal is due October 1st

Week 5, October 4-18: Audio/Podcasting Workshop

• Assigned media (podcast episodes): “Tech Talk: Disability Benefits & Algorithms — Talking Tech W/ Lydia X. Z. Brown & Alexandra Givens,” Jodie Mitchell and Sofie Hagen “€2 Million Dino Skeleton & Therapy: Not Your Mother's Erotica,” The Digital Graveyards Project “Episode 2: Interview with Stine Gotved,” @TangledArtsTO Twitter post “How do you make podcasts more accessible?”

October 11-15 is Reading Week.

There will be no lessons or scheduled work sessions during this time.

Week 6, October 18-22: Video Workshop

• Assigned media (YouTube videos): Jessica Kellgren-Fozard “Deaf & Blind On The Internet with @Molly Burke!”, Hannah Witton “Sex with a Stoma,” Annie Elainey “What is Inspiration Porn?”, Jessica Kellgren-Fozard “Why #FreeBritney is a Disability Rights Issue”
• Assignment Deadline: Project Outline is due October 22

Part 3: Critical Game Design

Week 7, October 25-29: Critical Play and Crip Game Design

• Assigned media: Mary Flanagan “What Are Activist Games?”, Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman “Anatomy of a Choice,” Adan Jerreat-Poole “Mad/Crip Games and Play: An Introduction”

Week 8, November 1-5: Choose-Your-Own-Adventure/Twine Workshop

• Assigned media: Kara Stone “Mental Illness + Making Games”

Week 9, November 8-12: Advanced Interactive Fiction

• Assigned media: choose two (2) of the games from the list on D2L to play

Part 4: Reflection and Revision

Week 10, November 15-19: The Labour and Ethics of Digital Making

• Assigned media: Eli Clare “A Note on Reading this Book: Thinking About Trigger Warnings,” Moya Bailey “#transform(ing)DH Writing and Research: An Autoethnography of Digital Humanities and Feminist Ethics”
• Assignment Deadline: Project Draft is due November 19.

Week 11, November 22-26: Work Session for Troubleshooting Projects

• No media has been assigned for this week. Additional live work sessions will be scheduled.

Week 12, November 29-December 3: Digital Showcase of Student Projects

• No media has been assigned for this week.
• Assignment Deadline: showcase participation/peer feedback due December 3

Assignment Deadline: final, revised projects are due December 10.

Class Participation - 10%

• Attend webinars
• Add to the Collaborative Google Docs
• Engage in online discussion

• One at the midpoint just after reading week
• One at the end of the term.

Generally speaking, online discussion is not oriented around instructor questions—although you will find some embedded in the lectures each week. Instead, I want to engage with you in a much less structured conversation about what you take (or find you cannot take!) from both the readings and the lectures. Your participation mark is based on not just the number but the nature and quality of your posts, and the way you engage in the ongoing D2L dialogue that we develop together as a class. I will be present in the discussions and engaging with you.

• To get a BASIC participation grade, you will post at least one comment in response to the module discussion exercises/questions each week. Your posts should integrate what you think and write about what you grasp from the module readings (even if partial). Also, think about what you 'don’t get' about the readings. Where does it leave you puzzled or frustrated? Being able to express your uncertainties, confusions, and struggles to understand is also part of good scholarship.
• To get a GREAT participation grade, you need to establish your presence as a learner, thinker, and writer in relation to this course material and to your classmates. In most cases, I am not looking for a 'right question' or a 'right answer' each week. Rather I look for you seeking your honest, critical response to the material, from confusion or outrage to insight, excitement, and celebration! Demonstrate your emerging knowledge, as well as your ongoing questions. What is your process as a reader from an area of study that may be currently quite strange to you? Are your ideas changing as you go along? (And if they are, that’s a good thing!)

Here are some general guidelines that are useful for online discussions:

• Read an entire thread and respond to what has already been posted. In other words: Be part of a conversation.
• Ask questions. Respectfully take people up on what they write, and as sure as you can ask questions be sure to respond to questions posed in your direction. You are not expected to fully understand everything in the course readings, so use the discussion board as a place to work through new/unfamiliar concepts.
• Avoid repetition. Read the entire thread before you post and say something different from other posters.
• Be respectful. Keep in mind that each person is moving through an exploratory process of understanding themselves in relation to course concepts, and this will manifest differently for everyone.
• Write clearly, but don't get caught up in writing perfectly. Avoid the use of acronyms or other jargon we may not understand, but at the same time don't be afraid to try writing in new ways: poetry, freewriting, notes, etc. are all useful methods of writing as we move through our discussion.
• Post regularly. Visit the discussion board two or three times per week and speak up when you feel moved to do so.
• Be specific where possible. If you are using quotations from readings or relying on other sources be sure to cite them.
• Keep it brief. You do not need to write an essay. Your discussion post is not an assignment-length paper. Rather, it is a method of participation. So focus on being present, rather than being perfect!

Project Proposal - 15%

Maker Spotlight Copyright Statements

All Videos

Chiara Francesca

Fady Shanouda

Jenelle Rouse

Jeff Preston

Squinky

Kaitlin Tremblay

Suggested Readings

Suggested Readings:

Additional/Suggested Readings

Additional/Suggested readings

Suggested Readings

• • AbleGamers https://ablegamers.org/
  • SpecialEffect https://www.specialeffect.org.uk/

• Tremblay, K. (n.d.).There Are Monsters Under Your Bed [Online Game]. https://philome.la/kaittremblay/there-are-monsters-under-your-bed/play/index.html
• Squinky, (n.d.). Imposter Syndrome [Online Game]. https://games.squinky.me/impostor/

• Gollydraft. (n.d.). Administer Naloxone [Twine Game]. https://texturewriter.com/play/gollydrat/naloxone

• Magnuson, J. (n.d.). Loneliness [Flash Game]. https://www.necessarygames.com/play/loneliness/?q=my-games/loneliness/flash

Suggested Readings

Cripping

“As a noun or adjective, ‘crip’ is of course a flamboyant reclamation, one that disabled activists, artists, and theorists have long used to signify solidarity and resistance…As a verb: ‘To crip’, like ‘to queer’, gets at processes that unsettle, or processes that make strange or twisted.” (p. 134)

Cripping Time

“Were you born that way? How much longer do you have to live this way? How long before they invent a cure? How long will a cure take? How soon before you recover?” (p. 28)

“I use “curative” rather than “cure” to make clear that I am concerned here with compulsory able-bodiedness/able-mindedness, not with individual sick and disabled people’s relationships to particular medical interventions; a desire for a cure is not necessarily an anti-crip or anti-disability position. I am speaking here about a curative imaginary, an understanding of disability that not only expects and assumes intervention but also cannot imagine or comprehend anything other than intervention.” (p. 27)

“Crip time is… time not just expanded but exploded; it requires reimagining our notions of what can and should happen in time, or recognizing how expectations of “how long things take” are based on very particular minds and bodies. We can then understand the flexibility of crip time as being not only an accommodation to those who need “more” time but also, and perhaps especially, a challenge to normative and normalizing expectations of pace and scheduling. Rather than bend disabled bodies and minds to meet the clock, crip time bends the clock to meet disabled bodies and minds.” (Kafer, 2013, pp. 27)

Cripping Technoscience

“Crips are not merely formed or acted on by the world — we are engaged agents of remaking.” (Hamraie & Fritsch, 2019, p. 7)

“Alice Loomer (1982), a wheelchair user, described her crip maker practices of repurposing household items for wheelchair maintenance or for ad hoc assistive technologies as “hanging onto the coattails of science.” Loomer argued that her own tinkering and maintenance practices “kept [her] away from nursing homes and attendants”: “I made it. So I know how to fix it…I may have failed as often as I succeeded, but I have equipment that fits me.” (p. 8).

• Do you have a finicky device? Do you know how to work something in your home that nobody else can work? What are your tricks for when your storage is full on your phone?
• How did you get to know the idiosyncracies of your device? Do you now have a unique relationship with that device that is different from other people in your household?

“the algorithms being created are likely to reflect the dominant social norms of our day and, perhaps, be even more discriminatory than the people who devised them” (p. 132).

“the power dynamics that exist in traditional print, television, and filmic biographies— where some subjects are deemed more worthy than others—do not simply disappear because biography is constructed in a “new” digital space. The hierarchical structure of the site, the cultural conditions and discourse, combined with the authorship bias, create a space that is not as open and egalitarian as the Wikipedia brand initially suggests” (p. 231).

All representations have social and political consequences.  Understanding how images create or dispel disability as a system of exclusions and prejudices is a move toward the process of dismantling the institutional, attitudinal, legislative, economic, and architectural barriers that keep people with disabilities from full participation in society. (p. 75)

We never come to imagine and perceive disability ‘purely,’ we perceive disability through our cultural assumptions.  While there is no one correct representation of disability, there are more or less typical representations of embodied differences that count as disability in Western culture. (p. 76, emphasis in original)

• Analyze stock photography to understand the roles of photographic representation in disability justice work.
• Perform a platform analysis of Instagram, interrogating the affordances, constraints, and accessibility of digital images and image-sharing online.
• Explore and analyze the ways images create and reinforce cultural understandings of disability and other intersecting identities.
• Create and edit our own images to communicate a personal narrative tied to a social/cultural/political issue or movement.

• How are disabled people, their bodies, and identities mobilized to send a message, and what message(s) do disabled people and their bodies send?
• What emotions do the bodies of disabled people elicit?
• How do audiences shape their relationships with brands that use disabled people in their photographic branding?
• Are disabled people seen as an asset or hindrance when it comes to building connections in branding and marketing?

Sample Platform Analysis

Platform Analysis - Ananya Rao-Middleton

• What are the affordances of Instagram? (what does it let users do?)
• What are the constraints of Instagram? (what does it not let users do?)
• How is Instagram accessible?
• How is Instagram inaccessible?
• In what ways can Instagram be harmful to users?
• Who owns Instagram? Who benefits from our content?
• When you post a photo, who owns the rights to that image?
• What is the broader culture around Instagram? Which demographics are targeted by Instagram? Who is excluded?
• How do these makers use Instagram to advocate, educate, and centre disability?

Additional Questions for Discussion:

• Consider the censoring of feminine nipples on Instagram and the politics and power dynamics that shape the circulation of images of bodies in the digital sphere.
• Who gets banned from Instagram?
• How have Instagram Stories changed the way we use or engage with the platform?
• What does the phenomenon of ‘Instafame’ and the practices of self-promotion and competing for followers and likes tell us about social media use under late-stage capitalism?

• How does Chiara define/talk about access?
• What barriers does Chiara discuss?
• What did you find most interesting in Chiara's interview?
• What resonated with your own experience?
• What was one thing you learned from watching/listening to Chiara's Maker Spotlight?
• Does Chiara's Maker Spotlight inspire you or make you think about your own digital storytelling in a new way?
• What is your own relationship to social media and/or digital images? Has it changed over time?

1. Mood Colour Palettes (5-10 minutes)

2. Selfies of Resistance (5-10 minutes)

3. Fragments of Home (5-10 minutes)

• Which activity was the most challenging?
• Which activity was the most inspiring or engaging?
• What barriers or difficulties did you encounter during this exercise?
• If you had more time, how would you have changed your images and/or stories?

Edit Your Images

Advanced

Accessible Text

Moving Beyond Canva: Choosing Your Own Photo Editing Platform

• What cost(s) are associated with the platform?  Is it entirely free?  Subscription based?  Is there a fee to download the app?
• Does the platform work on the device(s) you are wanting to use?  Is it important that the app you choose works on mobile devices and laptops?  Do you need to ensure that the platform works on both Apple and Android devices?
• Does the platform meet your access needs?  If you will be using the platform with others, does the platform meet their accessibility needs?

Who is Affected by the Digital Divide

Disabled / Able Divide

1. The diversity of disabled people’s experiences with technology
2. The many ways there are ‘built-in’ accessibility barriers to technology
3. The ingenuity and contributions of disabled people and culture to digital design
4. Intersectionality in disability and its high incidence alongside other marginalized identities with relationships to digital inequality such as class, race, and global location.

Indigenous / Settler Divide

“Connection to the land is what makes us Indigenous, and yet as we move forward into virtual domains we too are sneaking up and setting up camp — making this virtual and technologically mediated domain our own. However, we stake a claim here too as being an intrinsic part of this place — the very roots, or more appropriately routes. So let’s use our collective Indigenous unconscious to remember our contributions and the physical beginnings that were pivotal in how this virtual reality was constructed.” (L’Hirondelle, 2016)

Gender Divide

Global Divide

Contextualizing the Digital Divide

“material and social conditions have not given way to will and imagination… The disparities of the off-line world have not been upended and we do not have equal access to the tools of creative production and capacity to attract an audience” (p. 108).

Digital Divide in COVID-19

• Who is joining an online meeting/gathering/appointment from a private office on a high-powered computer, and who is calling in from a shared computer or a cell phone in a crowded apartment?
• Who isn’t able to join an online meeting/gathering/appointment at all?

Inaccessible and Harmful Digital Media

• Not always close-captioned
• Designed in ways that are not always accessible to people with colour blindness
• Flashing or strobing lights that can cause seizures

• Do these technologies require bodies to be in a certain position? I.e. Sitting at a desk, walking around, etc.
• What parts of our bodies do the technologies heavily rely on for use? I.e. Hands and fingers for touchscreens, ears and hearing for audio, etc.
• Does the platform have alt-text on images for screen readers?
• Does the platform offer close captions? Are the captions created by a person or a program, and how good are the captions?
• Is accessibility an afterthought or built into the platform?
• How might people with different physical disabilities access these platforms?
• How might people with mental illnesses be affected by these platforms and their content?
• Is it easy to find the access options or are they obscured or hidden?

• Who can afford these devices?
• Who can use them?
• Who can’t use them?
• Who can use them with difficulty or pain?
• What kinds of strength, stamina, and dexterity are required to operate an Xbox controller or a cell phone?

Activity: Device Platform Study

• What does the home screen look like?
• How do you navigate to the Zoom call?
• Once you join, how do you access the chat, turn on your video and audio, and access the class discussion?
• What abilities does your device require?

• How do you log into your device?
• What does the home screen look like?
• Are there bright lights, flashing lights, or loud sounds?
• How do you navigate to open documents or launch a web browser?
• What size are the keys or buttons?
• What font is the default? What size is the text? Can these be changed?
• What is the contrast between text colour and background colour? Can they be changed?
• What position does your body have to be in to use the device?
• Does your device have audio/voice control options? How effective are they?
• What is the size, shape, and weight of your device?
• What is the style design of your device? What colour is it? What shapes is it composed of? What textures?

• Identify the ways in which the production of technology is disabling to marginalized bodies.
• Move from a local/regional framework to a global/transnational view of the life cycle of a digital device—from creation to distribution to disposal.
• Situate ourselves in a series of relationships with other bodies, objects, by completing a mapping exercise that tracks the flow of materials, bodies, and affects around the globe.
• Use storytelling to challenge the myth that technology is inherently a social good, and that technology benefits and supports all disabled people.

Researching the Device

• What materials go into the creation of your device?
• Where are these materials mined? Who mines them?
• What is the impact of this labour on the miners?
• What is the impact of mineral extraction on the environment/land around these mines?
• Where are the devices manufactured? Who manufactures them?
• Who owns the company? How much does the owner make?
• What are the side effects on labourers of working with these materials?

“Other bodies are employed in the production processes precisely because they are deemed available for injury–they are, in other words, expendable, bodies whose debilitation is required in order to sustain capitalist narratives of progress.” Puar, 2009, p. 110

“in the ecosystem, Black people provide the most grueling labor for blood minerals, and they do the dangerous, toxic work of dismantling e-waste in places such as Ghana” (p. 164).

• What are some of the side effects of working with hazardous materials?
• Who is most likely doing this work? Where are they located? Do they have access to protective equipment and healthcare?
• How does mining and the transportation of hazardous materials impact the body?
• How does pollution, water poisoning, and environmental degradation impact individual and community health?

Mapping Exercise

Part 1: Materials

• Mark down the final destination (for now) of the device, where it resides with you.

• Use your research to mark down the following destinations on the map:

1) Where the minerals for the device were mined

2) Where the device was likely manufactured

3) Where the device resides now, with you

4)Where the device might end up when you recycle or discard it

• Keep in mind that it is nearly impossible to know exactly where the components of your cell phone came from. Guided by research, we will speculate possible locations the device could have moved through.
• You should have at least 4 locations marked on your map; likely more, if you’ve identified multiple minerals/materials that went into the creation of your device.
• Use arrows to connect these locations, showing the movement of materials around the globe.

Part 2: Disability

Part 3: Capital

• Who profits from this device? Note where the CEO of the company resides and what their salary is. A website that may help you find this information is https://www.investopedia.com/
• How much do the salespeople make at Best Buy or the Apple Store where you bought the device? Note on your map.
• How much do the designers of the device make? Are they located in Silicon Valley, Waterloo, or somewhere else? Note on your map.
• How much do the miners make?
• How much do the workers sorting e-waste make?
• Draw an arrow from your location tracing the flow of money through to the various workers on the chain, identifying who profits the most or least from the product

“identifying the ear as the body part that enables listening does not capture all that is involved in experiencing a sonic event. Listening is a multisensory act" (p.102)

Multimodal Listening

"multimodal listening requires undoing ear-centric habits and developing a holistic approach to sonic encounters through situated, embodied experience” (p. 118).

• Review and analyze our second series of Media Maker Spotlights. In this module, we highlight podcasters Fady Shanouda and Jeff Preston.
• Perform a platform analysis of podcasting, interrogating the affordances, constraints, and accessibility of audio platforms and digital audio file-sharing online.
• Consider a handful of the many ways sound can unite, divide, or otherwise impact human behaviours and social relationships
• Create and edit our own mini-podcast episode to communicate a topic or issue related to disability and technology.

1. Magby, J. (2021, Jan. 7). Tech Talk: Disability Benefits & Algorithms — Talking Tech W/ Lydia X. Z. Brown & Alexandra Givens [Audio Podcast]. CDT’s Tech Talk.[embed]https://soundcloud.com/cdt-tech-talk/tech-talk-disability-benefits-algorithms-talking-tech-w-lydia-x-z-brown-alexandra-givens[/embed] Automated Transcript by Otter.ai: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kwbLOqoBZgG4MgwZwdIkRpJpjNcv5LOCF6xELp4vtOc/edit?usp=sharing
2. Hagen, S., & Mitchell, J. (2018, Nov. 12). €2 Million Dino Skeleton & Therapy: Not Your Mother's Erotica [Audio Podcast]. Secret Dinosaur Cult.[embed]https://play.acast.com/s/a84271cb-6cba-5eed-8be7-d8737c7efd08/5be95b9094b484625704f318[/embed] Automated Transcript by Otter.ai: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XHx2xiDcwSX1v-eA6XXcB9d1IW-043uFERdaUeqvBsg/edit?usp=sharing
3. Jiwani, Y. (2019, Apr. 24).The Digital Graveyards Project. Episode 2: Interview with Stine Gotved. Intersectionality Research Hub.[embed]https://soundcloud.com/user-739908629/episode-2[/embed] Automated Transcript by Otter.ai: https://docs.google.com/document/d/13Put3cXrnxKdIskpEpIW_oPMhfzlNLj0ukaQwIL1Kk0/edit?usp=sharing

• What are the affordances and constraints of podcasting? (What does it let creators and listeners do and not do?)
• How is podcasting accessible? How is podcasting inaccessible?
• In what ways can podcasting be harmful to creators and listeners?
• Who owns the platforms that these podcasts appear on (SoundCloud, Apple, Acast)? Who benefits from the content?
• What is the broader culture around podcasting? What connections can podcasts make?
• How do these makers use podcasting to advocate, educate, and centre disability?
• Have transcripts been made available for these podcasts?
• Are trigger warnings being used?
• How does listening to a podcast feel different from reading a blog post or looking at images?
• How is music used in these podcasts? How does music or sound effects shape the mood/tone of the piece?
• Where and how do you listen to podcasts?

• How does Fady define/talk about access?
• What barriers does Fady discuss?
• What did you find most interesting in the interview?
• What resonated with your own experience?
• What was one thing you learned from watching/listening to this Maker Spotlight?
• Does this Maker Spotlights inspire you or make you think about your own digital storytelling in a new way?
• What is your own relationship to podcasts? Has it changed over time?

• Tech Talk is closely tied to our discussion of Safiya Noble’s Algorithms of Oppression in Module 3 and the invisible biases and consequent violence of algorithm and computer code that are never neutral. (Magby, J., 2021)
• The Digital Graveyards Project explores what it means to use social media to remember, memorialize, and represent death in different ways. Recall, also in Module 3, our discussion of representation—death, like disability, is curated in specific ways. What can and cannot appear in an obituary? Whose death is worthy of a front-page article and whose death in invisibilized? Social media is one place in which we can change or challenge these norms. (Jiwani, Y., 2018)

Practice Reading Aloud: Vocal Exercises

1. For the first half of your story, read very, very slowly. For the second half, read as fast as you can!
2. Start reading your script as quietly as possible. Continue raising in volume throughout the piece until the ending is very loud.
3. Pick one or two important moments in your story and insert dramatic pauses before or after the point to add emphasis. Mark the points down on your page so you don’t miss them during the read-through.

“I was leaning toward visual mediums in my practice as a way of giving the opportunity to disrupt them because I had been disrupted–visually.” (p. 63)

Three Qualities of Video Making

• Perform a platform analysis of YouTube, interrogating the affordances, constraints, and accessibility of digital videos and video-sharing online.
• Explore and analyze the culture around online video production and circulation in the context of North American settler colonialism, capitalist, white supremacy, patriarchy, and ableism.
• Practice using new platforms and technologies by creating and editing our own disability-focused videos.

• How do you navigate to YouTube on your device?
• What is the home screen layout? How do you access content on YouTube?
• What are the affordances and constraints of YouTube? (What does it let creators and viewers do and not do?)
• In what ways is YouTube accessible? How is it inaccessible?
• What technological requirements are needed to access YouTube?
• Who owns YouTube? Who profits from YouTube content?
• What is the broader culture around YouTube?
• How do these makers use videos to advocate, educate, and centre disability?
• How does the media maker build access into their videos? How could they improve their access measures?

• How do the makers describe their relationship to technology?
• How does Jenelle define ‘maker’? How does Jeff? In what ways are they similar and different?
• How is disability central to their work?
• How do the makers create access in their art?
• What barriers to participation do Jenelle and Jeff identify?
• What did you find most interesting in these interviews?
• What resonated with your own experience?
• What was one thing you learned from watching/listening to these Maker Spotlights?
• Do these Maker Spotlights inspire you or make you think about your own digital storytelling in a new way?
• What is your own relationship to video technology? Has it changed over time?

Planning and Pre-production

Freewriting and Mind Mapping Session

• What are the main content-related themes that continually come up? What does this tell me about the subject/content matter of my video?
  • Tip: try summarizing this in one sentence
• What information do I still need to seek out prior to filming?
• What information is better left out and/or covered in other ventures?
• What is the vibe and flow of the video I wish to create?
• What is the goal of my video, and what strategies can I employ to meet this goal?

Developing Your Script

• Words, phrases, and sentences that are important to your project and that trigger your memory
• Direct quotes
• Citational information such as important names, books, specific tv or podcast episodes, etc.
• Phonetic pronunciation guides for new or difficult words
• Timing guidelines to ensure you are on track and on time
• Pauses

1. You will have played digital games and have been asked to think and reflect critically about the design, the message, and the impact of these games.
2. You will have designed a short game that tells stories about access, justice, and society.

• Who are games made for? Who is included or excluded from playing games?
• When we pay attention to the designs and ‘rules’ of games, what does this tell us about who these games are made for?
• How do we, as players, accept or reject these designs?
• If we reject these designs and/or ask for accessibility, what does this tell us about the normative orders the game is maintaining?
• How can we design games to be more accessible?
• How do games communicate stories and arguments?
• How do games function as tools of activism?
• What are the limits of access in game design?

1. Navigate to the Wikipedia page for disability justice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disability_justice
2. Next, following links in Wikipedia, try to find your way to Beyoncé.
3. Try to keep track of the links you followed, or go back when you’re finished and write them down.

1. Disability justice
2. Mia Mingus
3. Barack Obama
4. List of Barack Obama 2012 presidential campaign endorsements
5. Beyoncé

1. Disability justice
2. Audre Lorde
3. Black feminism
4. Misogyny in rap music
5. Beyoncé

• What was the chain of associations that you followed?
  • How did you make decisions about what links to follow in the game?
• What was the most unexpected connection you made?
  • Why was this an unexpected connection?
• What stories were told by associations, keywords, and links?
• What themes emerged?
  • Were any of the themes unexpected or surprising?
• How did your story engage with cultural, societal, and political topics and issues?
• Did your story cross borders or span timelines/histories?
• Were there moments of friction or tension in your story?
• Did it make you uncomfortable?
• How do the start and end points shape the narrative we are telling?

Designing Your Own Wikipedia Game

1. Ask yourself:
   • What story do I want to tell with the player?
   • What interactive, collaborative message am I trying to convey?
2. Pick a theme related to disability justice that you want to explore and plan your Wikipedia pages accordingly—maybe you want to connect straitjackets to racism, Justin Trudeau to lead poisoning, or your hometown to Mad Pride or Disability Pride marches. .
3. Questions to ask yourself:
   • Why have I chosen these points?
   • Have I left space for player agency, choice, and unexpected connections?
   • What are the main connecting lines I’m drawing with my framework—do they cut across time, borders, or disciplines?
4. Create the game and then play it twice, marking down the different pathways you took. .
5. As an additional challenge, try ‘breaking’ your game on one of your playthroughs. Try to play critically and challenge the message you were trying to convey with your start/end points by making unexpected connections that subverts your initial message!

• Were you satisfied or not satisfied with the outcomes? Why or why not?
• What challenges did you face in designing your own game?
• What challenges or connections do you think players could make when playing your game?

I'm D. Squinkifer, Squinky for short. Most people call me Squinky. And I am a game designer. And I make things ranging from experimental video games like interactive art installations, immersive theater performances, just like all sorts of playable experiences. I have recently co-founded a worker co-op called Soft Chaos. And we design playable experiences together. And also we're a co-op. So we basically share all of the decision making in a democratic and equitable way.

• How does Squinky describe their relationship to technology?
• What does Squinky mean by the ‘right to repair‘? Can we connect this practice to materiality and the production of digital devices?
• Who is Squinky’s ideal audience?
• What challenges and/or barriers does Squinky describe?
• What is Squinky’s critique of the practice of ‘mastering difficulty’ in conventional gaming? How do they connect this critique to accessibility?
• Do you relate to parts of this interview? What is your relationship to games and interactive art/fiction?
• What was one thing you learned from this interview?
• If you could ask Squinky one question, what would it be?

• How do game designers create access in their work?
• How do mad, sick, mentally ill, and disabled creators use games to challenge ableism, to educate, advocate, and/or to demonstrate care for the player?
• In what ways are games accessible/inaccessible?
• What participation barriers (physical, attitudinal, social, cultural, emotional) exist on game platforms and gaming communities more broadly?
• What comes to mind when you think about accessibility in games and accessible forms of play? What do accessible games/game design look like to you?
• What digital skills are needed to play and make these games? How are those skills acquired?

2. Nonbinary: A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure is a game published by Adan Jerreat-Poole (2019) about being a nonbinary video game scholar. This game explores justice and inclusion in academia and gaming communities. http://www.firstpersonscholar.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/nonbinary-twine.html Please note that the transcript of this game is available here: http://www.firstpersonscholar.com/nonbinary-text/

• What choices were available to you? What choices do you wish had been available?
• How was the story told?
• What kinds of access were provided? In what ways were the games inaccessible?
• What story was being told and how did you participate in its creation?
• What emotions did the game evoke?

Interactivity and Choice

“Actions with consequences – interesting choices – unlock a new set of emotional possibilities for game designers. Ultimately, these possibilities exist because our feelings in everyday life, as well as games, are integrally tied to our goals, our decisions, and their consequences.” (p. 2)

• What choices in the games led to the most meaningful emotional impact for you?
• Were they choices that felt like they had consequences to them?
• And were the emotions created by these choices ones you would normally associate with videogame play?

Limited Choices

Engaging Players with Interactivity

Whose Choices?

“What if we made games that activated melancholy, or self-reflection, or tenderness? […] I think games are emotionally powerful, and it’s time we start channeling that power into a wider emotional landscape. We need to make reparative games, games that can help us heal.” (n.p.)

“some people have very specific ideas of what games should be or who should make games, and these people don’t always want to accommodate outside of their understanding of that.”

"An architect’s drafting table crossed with a conspiracy chart. Users start by creating a “passage,” or a simple text field, that can be linked to new passages. When you’re done with the story, you “publish” it as a single web file, which you can load in any ordinary browser."

"In an industry obsessed with photorealistic graphics, focus-tested gameplay, and ever-evolving open worlds, Twine’s simplicity felt liberating. It imbued games with the DIY spirit of homemade zines, many of them weirder, sharper, and queerer than their mainstream counterparts. According to some of its biggest fans, Twine was nothing short of a revolution." (n.p.)

“[Twine] developer and player communities are largely made up of people whose voices have, historically, been diminutized or excluded in this culture. These communities have mobilized Twine as a videogame-making tool partly in response to the exclusionary values, cultural discourses, and gendered subjectivities that took root in videogame culture in the 1980s and 1990s… but that still remain active today… They often explore themes unacknowledged (or deliberately avoided) by mainstream videogames, such as sexuality, gender, mental health, identity, race, and discrimination. Often, their play structures focus on experiences of disempowerment and marginalization as opposed to agency and power.” (p. 158)

“Because Twine opens up the possibilities of videogame creation to a broader audience, it risks destabilizing the dominant values sedimented in core videogame culture and is thus seen as a threat” (p. 187)

Affordances and Constraints of Twine

"Videogames by marginal developers often communicate more explicitly through a lack of freedom of movement by means of the various constraints placed on the player in videogames.” (p. 185)

“Although videogames always operate as open platforms and elastic equipment for making so many metagames, their screens, interfaces, and protocols can be inaccessible and disabling for many players.” (p. 170)

“We need to see play as both playing systems and playing with systems, as appropriation and resistance of systems. Computers give us the pleasure of bound, limited, logical experiences; play gives the pleasure of breaking those boundaries and making them ours.” (p. 98)

Conclusion

Measurements and Milestones

Ways to Measure a Creative Project

Milestones

1. Topic selection
2. Project proposal
3. Narrow topic to be more specific
4. Project outline
5. Finalize medium/platform
6. Project draft
7. Final version of project

• How does this version differ from the first one?
• What has been added?
• What has become visible?
• Do you have a clearer vision of the experience or the person?

• In what ways does digital storytelling and labour open us up to harm?
• How does the use of social media potentially harm the communities we write about?
• Are there ways to mitigate this risk?
• Who owns our work?
• How do we protect ourselves and our communities while doing digital work?
• How might performing digital labour harm our own bodyminds?

Accountability & Community

• How will other disabled readers view this?
• How might they feel?
• Am I representing a range of experiences outside of my own, or am I only writing about what it’s like to be a disabled white settler?
• If I am discussing experiences that are not my own, what accounts and research am I drawing on?
• Is it a respectful and accurate representation?
• If my work will make someone vulnerable to harm, have I anonymized them effectively?
• Most importantly, if I am writing about fan fiction, or a private Instagram account, have I obtained permission from the creator to use their work?

• Who will be reading/playing/watching this work?
• Who might be harmed by my work?
• Am I using trigger warnings and key words? Are there some images or descriptions I decided to cut out because they might be triggering?
• Have I listed the accessible features?
• Have I ensured there is no strobing, and that the piece is an accessible as I can make it at this point in my journey as a digital media maker?

1. Write down your ideal audience for your project.
2. Write down your actual audience.
3. List who might be interested in your work.

Trigger Warnings

“You can stop listening to or reading this book. You can read it fast or slow. You can read it out loud with your sister, partner, neighbor across the street. You can yell, type, breathe. Sign, sing, drink tea. Connect with your dog, cat, hamster, favorite tree. Call, text, Skype, Facebook, FaceTime with your friends. Lie in bed, roll, walk, dance, run.” (xx).

1. Create a list of content warnings or trigger warnings for your work, listing specific topics that you think might be triggering or emotionally challenging to engage with.
2. Expand these warnings to communicate if the topic is
   • mentioned briefly in passing
   • explored in-depth
   • uses graphic description or visuals.
3. Note what page number, slide number, or time stamp (for videos and podcasts) these triggers appear on.
4. Create a broader list of key words that tell the reader/viewer what topics will appear.
5. Create your own version of Eli Clare’s invitation to “stop listening to or reading this book.” Write a few sentences instructing the viewer/reader/listener on how they can engage with (or disengage from) your project. What care tactics would you recommend? How might they be accessing this material? Does your narrative need to be encountered linearly? Can readers skip parts?

Where Are We and How Did We Get Here?

The Medical Model

The Rehabilitation Model

The Charity Model

The Social Model

The Radical Model

• What is Kaitlin’s relationship with digital media?
• How does Kaitlin use game design to explore trauma, abuse, and grief?
• What advice does Kaitlin offer for marginalized people who are interested in getting into game design?
• What did you learn from the interview?
• What do you want to learn more about from this interview? What made you curious?
• Did any of Kaitlin’s insights resonate with your own experiences?

History of Disability Studies

Scholars and researchers began to think of disability as a social construction and a set of cultural products, and of disabled people as a group historically oppressed but politically recognized under the logic of civil rights. (Garland-Thomson, 2013)

With the critical idea of disability as a pervasive and productive presence in the world and self in place and universities supporting disability studies, the field yielded complex interdisciplinary work that expanded toward areas such as law, performance, life writing, design, bioethics, and material culture. By the twenty-first century, finding disability everywhere was no longer a critical surprise. (Garland-Thomson, 2013)

Examined Life - Judith Butler and Sunaura Taylor

Whiteness was normalized in this class and within the broader field of Disability Studies, in the use of colonialism merely as a metaphor to theorize ableism and the marginal position disabled people (read: white) inhabit in dominant spaces. What we are specifically speaking to are the ways in which white disabled people were understood as “colonized” by normate culture and pedagogies. While it is necessary to pay close attention to the many violences done onto particular bodies in order to maintain notions of able-bodiedness, intelligence, sanity, and productivity within a capitalist market, the appropriation of the term colonialism erases violent histories and contemporary realities. (p. 14)

I moved to San Francisco largely because it's the most accessible place in the world. Part of what’s so amazing to me about it is that the physical access—the fact the public transportation is accessible, there’s curb cuts most places, buildings are accessible—and what this does is it also leads to a social acceptability: because there’s access, there’s simply more disabled people out and about in the world… So physical access actually leads to a social access and acceptance. Taylor (1:30)

constructs such as limitation and enhancement, far from neutral or self-evident, produce a 'depoliticized' perception of disability, which… treat as common sense the notion that disability is a ‘problem to be eradicated.' (Hamraie, 2017, p. 13)

• What is the relationship between words and images in the essay(s) you chose?
• How might the narrative or argument change if the maker had to communicate in just words or just images?
• How did your chosen photo essay(s) inspire you to create with images or to explore photo essays as a digital method?
• Which essays did you choose to read and why?
• What about the colour and lighting stood out to you in the essays you read?
• Were the subjects facing the camera or looking away?
• What appeared in the frame of the image?
• What feelings did the images illicit?

Image Description Activity

• What was most challenging about this exercise?
• What was the most interesting or exciting?
• If you had more time, how would you have changed your image description?
• How did you create access in your narrative?
• How did the imagined context of the image impact your approach to writing your image description?  Would your image description change if you used the image in a different context?

• How are your image descriptions similar?  How are they different?
• How did you decide what to focus on in your image descriptions?
• When writing your image descriptions, what elements of the photography stuck out as particularly important to describe?  What elements seemed secondary or less important in your description?  Did you and your partner(s) focus on describing different elements or feelings in describing the images?
• How do the differences between your image descriptions allude to the subjective nature of writing image descriptions?
• What can you take away from your partner(s) approach to writing image descriptions?

Conclusion

This may feel true for every era, but I believe I am living in a time where disabled people are more visible than ever before.  And yet while representation is exciting and important, it is not enough.  I want and expect more.  We all should expect more.  We all deserve more.  There must be depth, range, nuance to disability representation in media.  This is the current challenge and opportunity for the publishing industry and popular culture at large. (xxi, emphasis in original)

Analyzing Our “Sound Diet” and Keeping a Sound Journal

• What were some of the dominant sounds you expected to encounter? Did logging them in your sound journal reveal any surprises or new insights about these sounds?
• What are some of the sounds that surprised you? How did they surprise you?
• Were you overwhelmed by the sheer volume of sounds you experienced? How did this help you think about sound pollution in your life?
• How did keeping a sound journal help you understand the embodied ways you interact with sound?

Using Sound Responsibly

Developing a Transcript

From a Script

• Does the punctuation in your script match your tone of voice?
• Are there areas where you are relying on auditory signals such as voice volume or pitch to communicate meaning? Is this adequately captured in your transcript?
• Is there music or other sound effects in your audio file? Have you included both a description of the music or sound effect and an explanation of why you have chosen the clip/how you envision it adding meaning?
• Have you included timestamps periodically so your audience can follow along?

Using Dictation Software

Hiring a Transcription Service

• Is outsourcing transcription work a viable option given the financial constraints of the project?
• Is the person or company I am hiring well-resourced in handling the content I need transcribed? (ex.- can they handle the technical terms used in my work?)
• Will the transcriber edit or refine the transcript upon your request?
• Is it ethical to hire outside transcription services? There may be situations where the audio you want to transcribe contains sensitive information meant only for a specific group of people. In this case, it is wise to consider ethics.

1. Pick a theme song for your podcast. Why did you choose that song? If you have time, record a snippet of the song and add it to your file.
   • Pro tip: Audio clips under ten seconds in length are generally considered ‘free use’. Clips over ten seconds get a bit more complicated, and whether or not they can be used royalty free depends on factors such as type of use. More information on audio use as well as free-to-use creative commons sources can be found in the additional recommended texts section in the readings of this module.
2. Pick a one sentence slogan for your podcast.
3. Pick a cover image, logo, or mascot for your podcast. Why did you choose that image? Again, be mindful of images that are free to use and do not have associated copyright or royalties.
4. Share your podcast (or not!) with your friends and family, or on one of the many podcast-hosting platforms
   • The following article by Tal Minear (2022) gives a summary of some of the most popular platforms: https://discoverpods.com/best-free-podcast-hosting/. Note that new platforms come out often and a Google search for current platforms and reviews can help you make the best choice for your needs.

• What was the goal of your podcast episode?
• What barriers or difficulties did you encounter through the process?
• Which reading aloud exercise was the most engaging or interesting? Which was the most challenging?
• How did you build access into your episode? If you had more time, what changes or additions would you make to create access?

Conclusion

“conscious listening is the key to everyone -- individuals as well as organizations -- taking responsibility for the sound they create, and for the sound they consume. Conscious listening is also the doorway to understanding” (p. 20).

"[Critical play] means to create or occupy play environments and activities that represent one or more questions about aspects of human life." (p. 6)

playculture…is one in which participants find a space for permission, experimentation, and subversion” (p. 13).

Games Are Not Neutral

"games carry embedded beliefs within their systems of representation and their structures, whether game designers intend these ideologies or not." (p.223)

Activist Games

• What games for change have you played (if any)?
• If you have, how were they games for change? What did they portray?
• What worldview were these games designed through?
• Did they confirm, reject, or transform the status quo?

1. In what ways, if any, was the game inclusive or accessible in its narrative, characters, or forms of play?
2. In what ways was the game inaccessible in its narrative, characters, or forms of play?
3. Did it have any problems with representation in its design or story? How?

• Why do we need to, as Flanagan (2009) says, “create or occupy play environments and activities that represent one or more questions about aspects of human life” (p. 6)?
• Why do we need to subvert and diversify games to be more inclusive?

Access doesn’t start and end with the player: we need more designers, artists, writers, and programmers with disabilities represented at all levels of the gaming industry. We need accurate and respectful portrayals of Mad and crip folx crafted by people with disabilities.

Game developers would benefit from hiring an accessibility consultant, an increasingly common practice in the games industry, or at least turn to players with various disabilities to playtest games to notice missteps that normative designers would not notice. (p. 713)

Batman: Arkham Asylum

I didn’t get to play Ivy. I had to play Batman. And Batman punished Ivy for being a Mad queer femme. He played the role of the legal system, and the legal system punishes people like her, like me. The logic of the game was patriarchal, sanist, ableist.

Pokémon Go

“Since Pokémon Go has been out, Niantic has banned disabled players from the game for using third-party software to mimic physical travel and placed restrictions on speed, making it more difficult for disabled players to catch Pokémon using automated transportation.”

• How is the game accessible?
  • Can you only play it in one way that is inaccessible?
  • Are there accessibility options?
  • Does the way you have to play the game seem inaccessible?
• In what ways could the game be made more accessible?
  • Is there anything players could do to reskin/rewrite it and make it more accessible?
• Using the game accessibility guidelines list any ideas you may have from reading accessibility reviews.
  • Choose a few design elements that could make the game you chose for the last activity more accessible.
  • How could they have been implemented in the game?

Conclusion

One perplexing trend [in game design]…is that a number of games are adding necessary accessibility options several months after a game’s release, in the form of downloadable software patches. (p. 713)

Mapping Access

“a device for asking questions: what counts as access, for whom, and under what conditions?” (p. 460).

What are digital stories?

How are digital stories made?

Principles of Digital Storytelling

Counter-Narratives

• As an empowering tool for marginalized people to share their personal narratives
• Digital stories typically use accessible and relatable language.
• By focusing on personal narratives, they draw in the audience and form points of relationship and identity around issues that may not commonly appear in the public sphere.

Community Happens in Beds

Advocacy Happens in Bed

“There was a Tumblr post that came across my dash during these weeks of protest, that said something to the effect of: ‘shout out to all the disabled people, sick people, people with PTSD, anxiety, etc., who can’t protest in the streets with us tonight. Your voices are heard and valued, and with us.’ Heart. Reblog… …So, as I lay there, unable to march, hold up a sign, shout a slogan that would be heard, or be visible in any traditional capacity as a political being, the central question of Sick Woman Theory formed: How do you throw a brick through the window of a bank if you can’t get out of bed?” (pp. 3 and 5)

Scavenger Hunt (3-4 minutes)

Writing Exercise (7-10 minutes)

• How does the setting impact the connection formed between the video creator and/or subject(s) and the audience?
• How does the setting of a video impact the framing of the subject of the video?
• Does the setting convey a sense of authority that is appropriate for the video topic?
• How might the background of a video aid in accessibility efforts? How might the background inhibit access for others? For example, does the background have flashing lights that may trigger photosensitive viewers? Could an overly-cluttered background impact viewers with anxiety?

Built-in Camera and Video Software

Editing and Distribution

Editing Scavenger Hunt

1. Draw the icon of the app/program. What images, concepts, or feelings does it evoke? How is that appealing or unappealing to you as a maker?
2. Where is the button to upload a video? What does it look like?
3. Name 3 ways you can edit your video.
4. Pick 1-3 buttons that look intriguing but have an unclear function. Click on them. What do they do?
5. Name 2 barriers to using the app.
6. On a scale of 1-10, how user-friendly is the design of the homepage? How easy or difficult is it to find the tools and information you want?
7. Where is the save button?
8. Where is the saved file on your device?

1. Navigate to the top right corner of the YouTube homepage. Click on the circular ‘account’ button.
2. Scroll through the dropdown menu and click the button that says ‘YouTube Studio’.
3. Once you reach the Yo​​uTube Studio landing page, navigate to the ‘your channel’ scroll down menu on the left side of the page. Scroll until you see the ‘subtitles’ option and click. This will bring you to a dashboard that displays your videos and the languages subtitles are available in.
4. Move to roughly the middle of the screen and locate the dropdown menu in the ‘languages’ column of the video you wish to edit automatically generated captions for. Click on the dropdown arrow to see all of the available subtitles.
5. Scroll through the menu and locate English (Automatic). These are the automatically generated subtitles. Move to the right of this row and hit the ‘duplicate and edit’ option. This will open a new workspace with the video on the right side of the screen and an editable copy of the captions on the left. Navigate around this space and ensure that you have edited the captions to your high quality accessibility standards.
6. Once you are finished editing your captions, you can either save a copy or hit the ‘publish’ button on the top right corner of the workspace.
7. After publishing your edited subtitles, you will now want to return to English (Automatic) caption row. Navigate to the three dots on the right side of this row and click. Then click the ‘unpublish’ button. This will ensure that the old and inaccurate captions are no longer available to those interacting with your video.

Audio Description

"It is important to focus on what is essential for the listener to know in terms of plot development and character. For instance, this includes who is on-stage or on-screen, who is speaking, the setting and scene – including entrances and exits, furnishings, furniture, etc. – the lighting, costumes, facial expressions, movements, actions, mannerisms, gestures, fights, and dances." (https://www.3playmedia.com/learn/popular-topics/audio-description/#audiodescription)

Activity Version One

Activity Version Two

• What barriers or difficulties did you encounter through the process?
• How did you build accessibility into your digital story?
• If you had more time, what changes or additions would you make to create access?
• Which activity was most useful to you as you crafted a meaningful video? What is one piece of advice you would give future makers based on what you learned from that activity?

Conclusion

Platform studies

“An umbrella term for holistic approaches to those entities that are understood and represent themselves as digital media platforms. Platform studies concern the technologies, interfaces, and affordances, ownership structures, business models, media- and self-representations, and governance of these entities.” (p. 25)

“...distinguishing between actual (physical) and virtual (digital) cultures is an old-fashioned hangover from an age of predigital thinking and what we really should deploy is the term ‘digital real’.” (p. 95)

“However, it would be a mistake to suggest that we are the ones in control of our digital engagements: that we are making the decisions and driving our use of the digital. Like all cultures, digital ones subject their members to particular ways of being in the world.” (p. 95)

Affordances and Constraints

“a rhetoric of disability that at once talks about empowering disabled people through technologies while at the same time reinforcing ableist tropes about what body-minds are good to have and who counts as worthy.” (p. 43)

“Why can’t a tech designer create a workable device to help with bowel and bladder control or nerve pain? These are a much bigger problem for many wheelchair users than the chair itself.” (Shew, 2020, p. 46)

• Develop a deeper understanding of ableism in discourses of new media.
• Interrogate ableist representations of disability and technology in pop culture and advertising.
• Begin to imagine cripped technologies and uses for digital media that emerge from disabled bodyminds, access, and collective care.
• Become familiar with the terms “cripping technology” and “crip technoscience.”
• Become aware of the invisible labour and biases that go into creating algorithms and web filters.
• Begin to think critically about the algorithmic and machinic processes that shape our everyday lives, from Google Search results to Wikipedia articles to Twitter feeds.

Disability, Technology, and Science Fiction

Disability, Technology, and Science Fiction: Cinema

• What technology is being represented here?
• What is the aesthetic of the technology?
• What does it do?
• Who made it?
• How does it change the body?
• What is the relationship with the [pb_glossary id="1006"]bodymind[/pb_glossary]?
• What is the relationship with community, access, care, and social justice?
• What emotions are associated with the technology?
  • Imagine the kinds of complications, feelings, and experiences that are connected to the technology
• Can you imagine a different use for this technology?
• Can we [pb_glossary id="198"]crip[/pb_glossary] this technology?

“Science fiction opens up possibilities for new worlds and ways of being that enact the crip possibilities of desiring disabilities. Disability studies grounds these possibilities in the present and material conditions in which we continue to experience physical and social barriers.” (p. 391)

• that technology is curative;
• that disabled bodies all want and need to be cured;
• that technology is made by able-bodied peoples for disabled users;
• and that technology can and should improve the limitations of our bodies.

Vertical Storytelling

Begin to develop your story

1. Your reflection on your personal relationship with an object in your space (module 2)
2. Your analysis of the representation of disability and technology in advertising or science fiction (module 3)
3. Your global map following the production of electronic devices (module 4)
4. Your narrative/analysis of technology for podcasting (module 6)
5. Your reflection on video creation and technology (module 7)

1. Cut and paste the transcript or notes into a new document.
2. Rearrange your notes into a series of steps or use your notes to create an endpoint you want players to arrive at. Use the questions below to guide your writing:
   • What part of the text would be the very first screen?
   • What scenarios, joys, or barriers would have to happen to create the situation described in your notes?
   • What options would players have to move through the story?
   • Create at least 2 different endpoints for players to arrive at.
3. Within these steps, highlight 3-5 words you would like to expand on in some way.
4. Write 1-3 sentences to accompany each word. This might be additional information about the object or concept, a personal story, reflection, critical analysis, or a quote from one of the readings. Be creative and experiment!

“We are beautiful, marginalized and diverse folk making games for diverse audiences. We prioritize storytelling, representation and social engagement above technologies and use the right tools to tell the best tales.”

• Download Twine 1.4.2 here: https://twinery.org/
• “Introduction to Using Twine” can be found here: https://opensource.com/article/18/2/twine-gaming

1. touch the computer
2. remember when you bought the computer

Twine Introduction: Terminology