Prioritizing Access as a Social Justice Concern: Advocating for Ableism Studies and Disability Justice in Technical and Professional Communication

Abstract

<bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Introduction:</b> This experiential teaching case study calls for technical and professional communicators to apply a combination of ableism studies and disability justice in examining their participation in potentially ableist, normative systems. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Situating the case:</b> Previous technical and professional communication (TPC) scholarship has demonstrated how the field of disability studies (DS) furthers TPC's goals of social justice, but it has not offered methods to trace the systemic ableist assumptions that contribute to disability's marginalization. I thus extend these considerations through attention to disability justice and ableism studies. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">About the case:</b> This teaching case evaluates my attempt to incorporate DS into my Writing for the Professions class by examining the warrants or assumptions reflected in class materials and student discussions to determine how DS's inclusion in the course impacted such warrants. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Methods/approach:</b> I used thematic coding to analyze class documents, student work, and semistructured student interviews and traced how reflected warrants contributed to understandings of ability and disability. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Results/discussion:</b> I found that analyzed documents predominantly relied on ableist warrants that obscured disability's relationality, positioned disability as deviance, limited efforts towards social change, and disregarded disability's intersectional complexity. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Conclusion:</b> To counter the use of ableist warrants that impede social justice goals, I recommend that TPC instructors foster critical understandings of systemic ableism by applying disability justice principles to their course materials. Through a combination of ableism studies and disability justice, TPC can pursue more socially just documentation practices.