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Contributors' Constructions of Critical Incidents

In this exhibit, as we suggest ways to listen for and construct problem narratives to better recognize and foster deliberation around public issues of shared concern, we take up access as one issue, among a host of others that Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Contributors raise in this set of literacy interviews. In pursuing access, we do not suggest we are experts in what access means for Deaf learners. That expertise is already produced for and in the Deaf community itself—and citations within this chapter suggest possible starting places where interested readers could turn for more background and research. Instead—within this figure-ground configuration—our goal is to highlight how the situated knowledge encoded in the interviews in/form problem narratives that merit more and more sustained public attention.



Framing Access

In considering access as an issue of shared public concern and paying attention to the ways Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Contributors constructed access as literacy learners—what they have had access to, where they were denied access, what barriers they overcame to pursue access, what access is good for and when it is too costly to be desirable—three distinct categories emerged from this set of narratives: access to Deaf culture, access to technology, and access to Discourses. So that readers may better appreciate the nuances of interviews as well as the schemas that inform our recognition and interpretation of problem narratives, for each category we first briefly offer some background knowledge that informed our own understandings and then present specific examples of critical incidents within and among the DALN Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing literacy narratives.


Access and Deaf Culture Access and Technology Access and Discourse
Jane Fernandes Jane Fernandes Brenda Brueggemann
Christopher Driscoll Warren Francis Anonymous


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