Extract

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Reimagining the Good Life with Disability

Communication, New Technology, and Humane Connections

MERYL ALPER, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, USAELIZABETH ELLCESSOR, INDIANA UNIVERSITY, USAKATIE ELLIS, CURTIN UNIVERSITY, AUSTRALIAGERARD MICHAEL GOGGIN, UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

Many deeply cherished notions of “the good life” are based on limiting notions of humans, things, and their environment. In particular, “the good life” is often imagined as a realm beyond illness, impairment, and especially, disability. This view is informed by deficit models of disability, which individualize disability rather than explore the “socio-cultural conditions of disablism” (Goodley, 2011, p. 29). With contemporary communication and new media, disability is even more seen as an impediment, barrier, or tragedy, to be overcome with digital technology. Regrettably, the widely shared experience of disability and its complex relationships with communication are only rarely seen as a resource for how we achieve “the good life,” in our own lives and societies, now and in the future.

Indeed while the field of communication increasingly engages with questions concerning marginalized populations—including issues of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and diasporic populations—the study of disability and its relationship with social, cultural, and political life is stagnant. New media are often hailed as a great “equalizer” for people with disabilities. Such arguments though tend to obscure the complex ways in which disability and technology intersect for better and for worse in the lives of people with various disabilities from diverse backgrounds....