Access for All: The Role of Dis/ability in Multiliteracy Centers
Date
2012
Authors
Hitt, Allison
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“Linked to the notion of multiliteracies is the
challenge to develop more equitable social futures by
redistributing the means of communication.”
– John Trimbur (30)
“For all students to have access to those things
composition has to offer—literate ‘skills,’ a voice, the
words to write the world—we must ensure that
disability is recognized and respected.”
– Jay Dolmage (15)
In David Sheridan and James Inman’s 2010 edited
collection, Multiliteracy Centers: Writing Center Work, New
Media, and Multimodal Rhetoric, Inman discusses
designing a multiliteracy center.1 He writes, “A final,
but vital, consideration should be the accessibility of
any zoned space for individuals with disabilities. In
this pursuit, the idea is not just to make spaces
minimally accessible, but instead to consider how the
disabled may be able to most fully participate in the
uses for which the spaces were designed” (Inman 27).
This comes as the last “special issue” of consideration
for design (28). Though Inman highlights disability
and access, these issues are not taken up further as
pedagogical considerations. I believe that we need to
explore and broaden our understandings of disability
as more than a physical design issue and of
accessibility as more than an issue for students with
disabilities. The creation of multiliteracy centers,
spaces “equal to the diversity of semiotic options
composers have in the 21st century” (Sheridan 6),
presents an opportunity to position disability within
the larger context of diverse learners in order to better
understand how we can create more accessible
multiliterate spaces and pedagogies.