{"id":211,"date":"2021-12-01T11:00:02","date_gmt":"2021-12-01T16:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.ryerson.ca\/digitaldisabilitystudies\/?post_type=chapter&p=211"},"modified":"2022-02-28T16:36:51","modified_gmt":"2022-02-28T21:36:51","slug":"module-5-overview","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca\/digitaldisabilitystudies\/chapter\/module-5-overview\/","title":{"raw":"5.2 Module Overview","rendered":"5.2 Module Overview"},"content":{"raw":"

Introduction<\/h1>\r\nIn the next three modules, the focus is on \"Crip Making: Image, Audio, and Video.\u201d In these modules, you will encounter a blend of theoretical work on the meaning of digital crip making as well as practical tips to guide you through your own process of digital creation.\u00a0 While you will find plenty to ponder in these pages, you may reach the end of the module and find yourself craving more information.\u00a0 Digital methods and crip creation are processes -- processes that often lead us to new questions and relationships with the world.\u00a0 This is part of the magic of digital methods: they keep us thinking and exploring.\u00a0 We resist the urge to give any \u2018final answers\u2019 or definitive accessibility guide as another goal of this Pressbook is to aid you in developing troubleshooting, problem-solving, and critical thinking skills, especially in the ever-changing digital context. You are encouraged to do further research, find the platforms that suit you, ask critical questions of your own, and play with different methods of building access into your own digital making.\r\n\r\nThis module begins with an examination of images in our everyday lives, including our digital creation.\u00a0 Why do we study images? In \u201cThe Politics of Staring: Visual Rhetorics of Disability in Popular Photography\u201d (2002) Rosemarie Garland-Thomson writes,\r\n
All representations have social and political consequences.\u00a0 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. <\/span>\r\n(p. 75)<\/span><\/blockquote>\r\nLet\u2019s break this quote down. In the simplest terms, Garland-Thomson is arguing that our encounters with images of disability are not socially or politically neutral.\u00a0 Tanya Titchkosky (2009) builds on the idea that images of disability are not asocial or apolitical, arguing,\r\n
We never come to imagine and perceive disability \u2018purely,\u2019 we perceive disability through our cultural assumptions.\u00a0 While there is no one correct representation of disability, there are more or less typical representations of embodied differences that count<\/em> as disability in Western culture. <\/span>\r\n(p. 76, emphasis in original)<\/span><\/blockquote>\r\n\"\"\r\n\r\nWhen considered together, Garland-Thomson and Titchkosky are arguing that we view images through our existing understandings of disability.\u00a0 Every picture we like on Instagram, every picture we see in an advertisement, and every photograph we use to support our research is viewed through our own personal lens.\u00a0 This lens is made up of our own cultural understandings, assumptions, experiences, and biases.\u00a0 In turn, we share our understandings and biases with others when we create and share images. The act of creating and sharing images can also be an act of passing along ableist, racist, sexist, classist, colonialist and imperialist, fatphobic, and various other oppressive perspectives.\u00a0 Click on the concepts below for examples of some of these \u2018-isms\u2019 and the ways they are mobilized in photography.\u00a0 Each section also offers a recommendation for a reading that helps highlight the issue. \u00a0 This will help us develop a shared vocabulary for discussing and analyzing problematic or troublesome perspectives created and enforced by images.\r\n\r\n[h5p id=\"48\"]<\/span>\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n\"\"\r\n\r\nAfter learning more about problematic systems and structures created and enforced by images, take a moment and think about some of the biases you may bring to your creation and interpretation of images.\u00a0 What are your initial perceptions of the following image?\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n[caption id=\"\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"960\"]\"A<\/a> Fig 1. Image source: PublicDomainPictures on Pixabay.[\/caption]\r\n\r\nYou did not have any context for this image, but you likely had some initial reactions or feelings.\u00a0 Your mind may have begun to form a story, to narrate what is happening in the image.\u00a0 Did the black and white finish of the image prompt you to think about the cultural mindset of disability as unfortunate or disabled people as the objects of pity?\u00a0 Perhaps social constructions of masculinity as the \u2018norm\u2019 popped up and you found yourself assuming that the subject sitting in a wheelchair is a man. How might this image reinforce the perception of women and feminine people as caregivers?\u00a0 Can we reflect on the ways wheelchairs are used in images as a dominant symbol of disability?\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n\"\"\r\n\r\nNow that you are warmed up and ready to engage critically with images, consider the following learning goals and make your way through the content and exercises in this chapter.\r\n\r\nIn this module we will:\r\n
    \r\n \t
  • Analyze stock photography to understand the roles of photographic representation in disability justice work.<\/li>\r\n \t
  • Perform a platform analysis of Instagram, interrogating the affordances, constraints, and accessibility of digital images and image-sharing online.<\/li>\r\n \t
  • Explore and analyze the ways images create and reinforce cultural understandings of disability and other intersecting identities.<\/li>\r\n \t
  • Create and edit our own images to communicate a personal narrative tied to a social\/cultural\/political issue or movement.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>","rendered":"

    Introduction<\/h1>\n

    In the next three modules, the focus is on “Crip Making: Image, Audio, and Video.\u201d In these modules, you will encounter a blend of theoretical work on the meaning of digital crip making as well as practical tips to guide you through your own process of digital creation.\u00a0 While you will find plenty to ponder in these pages, you may reach the end of the module and find yourself craving more information.\u00a0 Digital methods and crip creation are processes — processes that often lead us to new questions and relationships with the world.\u00a0 This is part of the magic of digital methods: they keep us thinking and exploring.\u00a0 We resist the urge to give any \u2018final answers\u2019 or definitive accessibility guide as another goal of this Pressbook is to aid you in developing troubleshooting, problem-solving, and critical thinking skills, especially in the ever-changing digital context. You are encouraged to do further research, find the platforms that suit you, ask critical questions of your own, and play with different methods of building access into your own digital making.<\/p>\n

    This module begins with an examination of images in our everyday lives, including our digital creation.\u00a0 Why do we study images? In \u201cThe Politics of Staring: Visual Rhetorics of Disability in Popular Photography\u201d (2002) Rosemarie Garland-Thomson writes,<\/p>\n

    All representations have social and political consequences.\u00a0 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. <\/span>
    \n(p. 75)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    Let\u2019s break this quote down. In the simplest terms, Garland-Thomson is arguing that our encounters with images of disability are not socially or politically neutral.\u00a0 Tanya Titchkosky (2009) builds on the idea that images of disability are not asocial or apolitical, arguing,<\/p>\n

    We never come to imagine and perceive disability \u2018purely,\u2019 we perceive disability through our cultural assumptions.\u00a0 While there is no one correct representation of disability, there are more or less typical representations of embodied differences that count<\/em> as disability in Western culture. <\/span>
    \n(p. 76, emphasis in original)<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    When considered together, Garland-Thomson and Titchkosky are arguing that we view images through our existing understandings of disability.\u00a0 Every picture we like on Instagram, every picture we see in an advertisement, and every photograph we use to support our research is viewed through our own personal lens.\u00a0 This lens is made up of our own cultural understandings, assumptions, experiences, and biases.\u00a0 In turn, we share our understandings and biases with others when we create and share images. The act of creating and sharing images can also be an act of passing along ableist, racist, sexist, classist, colonialist and imperialist, fatphobic, and various other oppressive perspectives.\u00a0 Click on the concepts below for examples of some of these \u2018-isms\u2019 and the ways they are mobilized in photography.\u00a0 Each section also offers a recommendation for a reading that helps highlight the issue. \u00a0 This will help us develop a shared vocabulary for discussing and analyzing problematic or troublesome perspectives created and enforced by images.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    \n