Elizabeth Ellcessor Livres

While digital media can offer many opportunities for civic and cultural participation, this technology is not equally easy for everyone to use. Hardware, software, and cultural expectations combine to make some technologies an easier fit for some bodies than for others. A YouTube video without closed captions or a social network site that is incompatible with a screen reader can restrict the access of users who are hard of hearing or visually impaired. Often, people with disabilities require accommodation, assistive technologies, or other forms of aid to make digital media accessible-useable-for them. 'Restricted Access' investigates digital media accessibility - the processes by which media is made usable by people with particular needs - and argues for the necessity of conceptualising access in a way that will enable greater participation in all forms of mediated culture

"In Case of Emergency argues that emergency media are profoundly cultural artifacts that shape the very definition of "emergency" as an opposite of "normal." The normalizing ideologies produced and reinforced by emergency media result in unequal access to emergency services and discriminatory assumptions about who or what is a threat and who deserves care and protection. Thus, a primary function of emergency media is to produce feelings of safety in some while designating others as targets of surveillance and control"--