Giving Voice: Mobile Communication, Disability, and Inequality (The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning)

Alper, Meryl

ISBN 10: 0262533979 / ISBN 13: 9780262533973

Published by The MIT Press, 2017

About this Item

LIKE NEW!!! Has a red or black remainder mark on bottom/exterior edge of pages.

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: Giving Voice: Mobile Communication, Disability, and Inequality (The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning)
• Publisher: The MIT Press
• Publication Date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0262533979
• ISBN 13: 9780262533973
• Binding: paperback
• Condition: Fine

About this title

Synopsis

Winner of 2018 PROSE Award Honorable Mention, Association of American Publishers, Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division, Media and Cultural Studies Category

Winner of 2018 Outstanding Publication in the Sociology of Disability Award, American Sociological Association, Section on Disability and Society

How communication technologies meant to empower people with speech disorders―to give voice to the voiceless―are still subject to disempowering structural inequalities.Mobile technologies are often hailed as a way to "give voice to the voiceless." Behind the praise, though, are beliefs about technology as a gateway to opportunity and voice as a metaphor for agency and self-representation. In Giving Voice, Meryl Alper explores these assumptions by looking closely at one such case―the use of the Apple iPad and mobile app Proloquo2Go, which converts icons and text into synthetic speech, by children with disabilities (including autism and cerebral palsy) and their families. She finds that despite claims to empowerment, the hardware and software are still subject to disempowering structural inequalities. Views of technology as a great equalizer, she illustrates, rarely account for all the ways that culture, law, policy, and even technology itself can reinforce disparity, particularly for those with disabilities. Alper explores, among other things, alternative understandings of voice, the surprising sociotechnical importance of the iPad case, and convergences and divergences in the lives of parents across class. She shows that working-class and low-income parents understand the app and other communication technologies differently from upper- and middle-class parents, and that the institutional ecosystem reflects a bias toward those more privileged. Handing someone a talking tablet computer does not in itself give that person a voice. Alper finds that the ability to mobilize social, economic, and cultural capital shapes the extent to which individuals can not only speak but be heard.

About the Author

Meryl Alper is Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Northeastern University. She is the author of a MacArthur Foundation Report, Digital Youth with Disabilities (MIT Press).