Abstract
As television moves beyond digital broadcast modes of distribution towards online modes of delivery, this paper considers the opportunities and challenges for people with disabilities. With accessibility relying on a complex mix of regulation, legislation and industry innovation, the paper questions whether predictions of improved accessibility are an automatic outcome of new television technologies. The paper asks ‘where to next?’ for disability and the Internet through an emphasis on the importance of television in an accessible new media environment. The paper draws on government policies, the activist intervention of a number of people with disabilities as documented online, and primary research into Australian television audiences with disabilities that took place in 2013 and 2014.
Highlights
As discussed by other papers in this special issue, disability Internet studies has much to offer disability theorisation by highlighting issues related to accessibility and useability
Acknowledging the importance of accessibility, Jaeger notes the significant role of legislation in ensuring accessible television and new media yet cautions, as do a number of contributors to this special issue, that guidelines are rarely enforced
Television has undergone a number of technological changes, including the introduction of colour, the adoption of the remote control, stereo sound, VCRs, DVDs and, most recently, digital television and online modes of delivery such as Internet TV, downloading TV on tablets and broadband based television
Summary
As discussed by other papers in this special issue, disability Internet studies has much to offer disability theorisation by highlighting issues related to accessibility and useability. In 2003 Gerard Goggin and Christopher Newell argued that despite being a culturally ubiquitous social connector, ‘for many people with disabilities [television] has been a difficult to see or hear, impossible to watch or listen to, absent cultural technology’ [1] In keeping with their broader argument in digital disability that new technologies disable as well as enable, they identify television, alongside mobile telephones and the Internet, as forms of new media which, presented as a panacea in modern societies, continue to create disability. Goggin and Newell (2003), Ellis and Kent (2011) and Jaeger (2012) all identify television as an important site of social inclusion and argue that the exclusion of people with disabilities is an issue that must be addressed. Digital and online television could potentially offer greater access to this information for people with disabilities, those with vision, hearing and physical impairments (Ellis, 2012; Robare, 2011; Slater, et al, 2010); this is far from automatic
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