Enabling the Reader

Kefaya Diab

Volume 5

Chapter Description

Students in writing courses often circulate inaccessible and hard-to-read digital documents to their teachers and peers, thus disabling the readers. This essay is inspired by my experience with my students and the activities I design to help them notice the importance of composing readable and accessible digital texts. The essay draws on feminist and critical disability studies that perceive environments and social norms as disabling rather than the body as disabled from within. Therefore, the essay holds the author accountable for designing texts that enable the reader. The essay focuses on the context of student authors and their readers within the class community. The focus serves as a starting point to taking what students learn in class to their targeted audiences in the world. The essay brings examples of digital texts that disable the reader and works some out to show examples that enable the readers. The essay also includes exercises for individual homework and in-class group activities.

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