Many texts often exclude and marginalize readers from its content. Writers produce their writings without thinking about the accessibility of their work and what type of readers they might not be reaching due to the lack of a not carefully considered document design. Natasha N. Jones and Stephanie K. Wheeler turn to Universal Design for Documents (UDD) as the best solution to this problem on their article “Document Design and Social Justice”, because it implies the writer has established values and considered inclusiveness when designing their work. Their suggestion also aims to not prioritize one audience over another, evening out their discourse community.
Jones and Wheeler know how to write to their audience, which are mainly writers. Their purpose was to present a different framework of document design, UDD, as the better alternative to the accessibility and usability frameworks. They do so by carefully analyzing each method and pointing out their benefits and handicaps before praising the method they suggest. Their
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Jones and Wheeler mention that this framework promotes “collective access…and participatory design” (663), but its most valuable characteristic is how it allows the writer to assume a common and universal background knowledge between readers and adapt their work to that vision. To a Philosophy writer using UDD, for example, a reader with a PhD in Philosophy and a reader with a minimum knowledge of Philosophy are in the same discourse community. Her work will be designed to attend to the necessities of that discourse community, which means assuming the reader with a superior knowledge of the subject and the reader with no knowledge of it require the same things to be able to understand and engage with what she writes. When writing, thinking of the reader with the least amount of knowledge of a subject possible allows the writer to reach a broader scope of
While preparing for one of his college lectures, Dennis Baron, a professor and linguistics at the University of Illinois, began playing with the idea of how writing has changed the world we lived in and materials and tools we use in everyday life. This lecture slowly transitioned into “Should Everybody Write?” An article that has made many wonder if technology has made writing too easy for anyone to use or strengthens a writer's ability to learn and communicate their ideas. Baron uses rhetorical strategies in his article to portray to his audience his positive tone, the contrast and comparison of context and his logical purpose.
Writing requires a delicate balance between pleasing an audience, yet finding and sticking true to personal perspectives. More often than not, people find themselves ignoring their own thoughts and desires and just following along with the crowd, not standing up and arguing for anything, leaving behind a wishy-washy essay because they are too scared to stray from the obligations to others before the obligation to themselves. Anne Lamott’s “The Crummy First Draft” and Koji Frahm’s “How To Write an A Paper” both evaluate and stress the importance to find your own voice in writing and to be more critical towards readers. The reader’s perspective needs to play a role in writing, but it should not overrule the writer themselves. Writing needs to
Near the opening of Rose’s scholarly journal she brings it to the attention of her audience that she is an instructor “As a teacher attempting to make sound pedagogical decisions about the use of digital texts…” She does this by subtly adding it to the commencement of a sentence in her article. The purpose of Rose’s job title reference was to establish trust with her readers because she was aware that by mentioning her position as a teacher Rose would show that she is more qualified to be writing on this very topic. Rose also tapped into an additional ethos persuasion when she said “Therefore, in the following elaborations of the six emergent themes, I use a first person narrative to represent them in a way that is both clear and evocative of the lived experience.” She is alluding to Donald Polkinghorne’s statement that voiced the importance of an idea being communicated thoroughly with a clear and detailed expression of the
Discourse communities and literacy sponsors are very useful terms to know while in college reading and writing in order to understand and finish the course. This paper is a great example as a whole on why these two terms are indeed useful, without them this paper could not have been written. Everyone is involved somehow with a discourse community and literacy sponsor so it is always good to understand what these things are that you are involved with and how to notice them in college reading and writing along with the world.
All throughout history, individualism has been key to the advancement of humanity including - most importantly the spreading of freedom. The world we live in has been changed greatly through the individual's critical understanding of literacy. The vigilant and knowledgeable use of the written word is what carries one's claims to the world. "Emancipatory literacy is a necessary foundation for cultural action and freedom, a central aspect of what it means to be a self & socially composed agent. X" This type of literature is used to empower the people who use it. It involves engaging in acts of writing and reading that are used to liberate humanity. How can anything be changed without the use of this emancipatory literacy? "We must write as if our lives depended on it. X" Literacy gives a voice to our ideas, and creates a space for us in the world to work toward change and to reflect on that change so that it is not forgotten.
However the presence of a disabilities does not suggest a lower literacy achievement as mentioned in chapter 17. Critical literacy involves examining and analysing the ways authors and illustrators present worldviews, this is why incorporating texts of popular culture is beneficial for teaching literacy, as children are able to question these worldviews in any form of text. With texts of popular culture frequently reflecting sexism, violence and racism, it can help children develop an understanding of the correct and incorrect ways of modern life while also learning literacy. However when selecting texts, teachers should make sure it is appropriate to the age group but also doesn’t offend any children or families. As some children with disabilities are not immersed in literacy outside of school as the parents are focused on the medical side rather than literacy, teachers must help families find ways to support learning literacy through everyday literacy tasks. By encouraging children with disabilities to read, listen, watch or talk about forms of texts, provides the opportunities to participate in social activities through critical
Usability is a critical portion of web design that one must be ever mindful of when constructing websites. Whether creating a personal web space or building multiple pages for a large corporation, it is the burden of the designer to guarantee people can access that content. According to the United Nations, disabled people compose roughly 10 percent of the world’s population (United Nations, 2010). Many regulations and standards have been set forth to provide disabled people with the same opportunities to access content available on the World Wide Web, as it is most of the World’s population.
God is the ultimate authority over us. He is the Alpha and the Omega. God does not like injustice. Though he allows it, he is not a fan. I believe he has called other social workers, including me, to start to work towards social just. It is God’s desire to have a just world. Isaiah 20:29-31 states, “He gives strength to the weary, and to him who lacks might He increases power. Though youth grow weary and tired, and vigorous young men stumble badly yet those who wait for the Lord will gain new strength; They will mount up with wings like eagles, They will run and not get tired, They will walk and not become weary.” I interpret this as God saying that the weak will be made strong. This is God prophesizing social justice when he returns. Since God is my ultimate authority, it is my Christian duty to begin to do my part to seek social justice. Matthew 25:40 states, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the
Social justice advocacy has served as organized efforts with the intended purpose to encourage public attitudes, form strategies, laws to create a more socially just society, led by the vision of human rights. The main purpose for these efforts is to provide awareness of socio-economic inequalities, protection of social rights, as well as racial identity, experiences of oppression and spiritualty. Social justice advocacy and social justice counseling play a very important role in today’s society and are mutually being utilized in the counseling world. Activism will always be needed and has been perceived to be one of the most powerful tools for initiating social change.
“While it is true that more books are sold today than ever, recent statistics show that only about 15% of books bought today are read. Evidently, they are of more use as furniture—coffee-table books—than as a source of information or aesthetic buzz. The statistics continue; of those that are read, less than 20% are read all the way through. The unfinished book symbolizes the state of attention spans today”. Eric McLuhan opens up his 2010 argument against technology with this quote. He seems to believe that literacy is only fully achieved through limited technology and hard copies of books. He fails to realize there is more to literacy that picking up a book defined as a ‘classic’ and reading it cover to cover. Literacy covers all spans of artistic
Social Justice to me means that everyone has the same opportunity to experience life in such a way that they can have all their needs met and feel fulfilled as people. This may sound really simple, but it is actually a very complex idea that I am going to try to break apart and try to explain here. The first part is everynone. When I say everyone, I mean every person in existence. Whether they are a citizen of the United States, a refugee from Syria, or an astronaut, no longer in the atmosphere. In essence, everyone counts. Second is opportunity. Opportunity is the set of circumstances that make an outcome available and the ability to capitalize on those circumstances. Third is experiencing life. This refers to the ability to move through their life from beginning to end with the freedom and agency to make educated choices about things that affect them. The final part is having needs met and feeling fulfilled. This is probably the most difficult one to explain effectively. To illustrate this idea I look to Abraham Maslow and his hierarchy of needs. I assert that in a socially just society everyone should have their needs met starting with the most basic (the ones on the bottom) to the most
This method is defined as an approach characterized by the interaction between cognition, discourse and society. What seems to be the main difference between Fairclough’s and van Dijk’s approach is the second dimension, which mediates between the other two. Whereas van Dijk perceives social cognition and mental models as mediating between discourse and the social, Fairclough believes that this task is assumed by discourse practices (text production and consumption). Cognition, the key element in van Dijk’s approach, is achieved in collective mental models as a result of consensus and becomes the interface between societal and discourse structures (van Dijk, 2009). There seems to be a dialectical relationship between societal structures and discursive interaction. Discourse is the medium by which societal structures are “enacted, instituted, legitimated, confirmed or challenged by text and talk” (Fairclough & Wodak, 1997, p. 266). Van Dijk considers that CDA requires a model of context based on Moscovici’s (2000) social representation theory: social actors involved in discourse do not exclusively make use of their individual experiences, but rely upon collective frames of perception known as social representations, a bulk of the concepts, values, norms, associations, explanations and images shared in
In the recent times with the rise of digital technology smart phones and computers are slowly replacing many physical items such as paper and pen. Since the creation of ‘e-readers’ more people have been shifting to the technology-based side of reading. Some e-readers are just devices dedicated to displaying newspapers and magazines ...
...ypertexted documents offer an interaction for the reader that was not possible before. The interconnection creates a unifying effect between the reader and writer where the reader of literature plays a role once reserved only for the writer.
Reading – we do it every day. In almost every aspect of our lives and often take it for granted. Reading is essential for human communication and increasing knowledge. However, because reading is so important even a small change can have a significantly large impact on our modern society. We are currently in a midst of a cultural revolution. In which the printed word is being transformed by the digital.