Disability Studies, Multimodality, and Literacy
As James Wilson and Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson (2001) argue, through allying rhetoric/composition and disability studies “new perspectives and common features emerge” (p. 6); one particularly compelling link is “disability's relation to rhetoric through the mediating term of the body” (p. 6). By exploring new media literacies through the lens of disability, we can “understand the role of the body in learning and writing, to view bodies and minds as inherently and wonderfully divergent” (Lewiecki-Wilson and Brueggemann, 2007, p. 1). While multimodality acknowledges the embodied nature of literacy, “the bodilyness of mode,” as Kress describes it (2003, p. 45), the emphasis in expanding our notions of literacy has decidedly favored the visual, leaving other modes less explored. This emphasis on the visual in multimodality ignores the fully embodied opportunities of literacy; for individuals with low vision or blindness, the increasing focus on the visual as an emphasis in multimodal practices makes literacy less accessible, not more expansive.
The lens of disability makes the technology of literacy more transparent, demanding that we become aware of the limitations of our current literacy practices. As Takayoshi and Selfe (2007) write in the introduction to their collection on multimodality in the composition classroom, “With the new technologies now mediating composition—the web, digital video, digital photography, digital sound—different aspects of composing meaning, of communicating, have been foregrounded” (p. 4); one of these aspects of composing meaning that must be attended to is the impact of disability, yet it is frequently overlooked. In reminding us of the embodied nature of literacy, multimodality seems to offer new opportunities. As Kress (2000) explores, “so-called literate Western societies have for too long insisted on the priority of a particular form of engagement. . .the focus on print engages my visual sense, and focuses all energy there. It ignores (and thereby effectively negates) all other senses.” Through multimodality, the logic follows, more senses are engaged and therefore more individuals have the opportunity to engage with texts and their meanings.
However, while multimodality and new media promise universality, Goggin and Newell (2002) argue that the “needs, desires, and aspirations [of the disabled] are still rarely taken into account in the cultural and social shaping of these [new media] technologies” (xix). Our failure to consider the perspectives of the disabled “leaves intact a set of normative assumptions about students' bodies, minds, and abilities. These assumptions operate behind the scenes. They are activated readily and unconsciously as beliefs about how well or poorly students move, see, hear, think, learn, know, act and use specific technologies” (Zdenek, 2009, n.p.). Disabilities highlight specific breaks and ruptures in the practices of literacy, showing us where our definitions of literacy fail. As DeVoss, et al. (2005) explore, new media composition is constrained by “often invisible structures [which] make possible and limit, shape and constrain, influence and penetrate all acts of composing of new media in writing classes”(16). The meeting of multimodal literacy and disability offer an important opportunity to explore the limitations of print literacy and the possibilities for a new conception of literacy.
While the multimodal composing opportunities brought to us by new media remind us continually that literacy is embodied, they should also be reminding us that not every body is the same. As noted previously, braille reading ability can be diminished by tactile impairments caused by age or illness such as diabetes; not every person who is blind will be able to read braille. Insisting that braille is literacy for people who are blind assumes that there is only one type of blindness, a blindness that does not change over time or co-exist with other factors. Disability studies scholar Lennard Davis (2010) argues that we employ disability as our primary lens for understanding social contexts and constructs such as literacy. He argues for a “dismodern” perspective where “impairment is the rule, and normalcy the fantasy” (p. 314) and we accept that “difference is what all of us have in common.” Disability studies offers “a location and a means to think critically about disability” (Linton, 1998); I argue that disability studies also offers us a location and a means to think critically about literacy; the commonality of difference, the rule of impairment highlights rupture points which confirm that “the perspective of disability. . .should not just be included or supplementally accommodated in the writing environment; it must change what we do” (Dolmage, 2009, p. 179).