Abstract
Access is not the ending but rather the beginning of a process. This is one of the foundational underpinnings of Elizabeth Ellcessor’s Restricted Access: Media, Disability, and the Politics of Participation. Ellcessor speaks against a conception of access merely in terms of “availability, affordability and choice” and instead argues for a discipline that attends to “what is being accessed, and for what purposes, prompting ongoing critique of the political dimensions of access and its instantiation via cultural discourses” (p. 8). Technology she argues, while often perceived as a solution to “fix” disability, actually creates divisions. Such thinking locates Ellcessor’s work within a social model of disability. In Restricted Access, Ellcessor unpacks the ways in which disability is created, diminished, or exacerbated at the intersection of technology, culture, and embodiment. The work and the critical framework developed by Ellcessor necessitates Restricted Access becoming a canonical text.
As Ellcessor states, media accessibility and digital media technologies have been sites of “negotiation, innovation, and resistance over the past twenty years” (p. 13). She adds to this literature by drawing from critical disability studies and contemporary cultural studies of media. Here, data are acquired from a multitude of sources, including “archival, popular, interview, and ethnographic research” (p. 13). Restricted Access’s interrogation is through Ellcessor’s development of an “access kit,” consisting of five categories “regulation, use, form, content, and experience” (p. 17). Though each category makes for a compelling case study in its own right, they form an effective means through which to frame access when placed in conversation with each other. The stakes of the conversation of access present throughout Restricted Access cannot be understated. As Ellcessor argues “the exclusion of people with disabilities from online media and attendant participatory cultures is particularly troubling given the potential of these spaces to foster engaged, active citizens of the world” (p. 5). The implication here being that in digital spaces, potential participants of inclusive conversations face the barrier of access.
In Ellcessor’s first chapter, she takes up the issue of regulation. In this section, she interrogates the range of contexts in which access is discussed, drawing from government documents, corporations and nonprofit organizations, finding that legislation has such narrow definitions as to make enforcement nearly impossible. In examining guidelines, Ellcessor discerns how industries attempt to prevent legislative action by proving compliance. In either case, the larger concern of government or industry is not that of access but risk reduction. She notes that disabled individuals are less concerned with rhetoric than they are with results. Yet in all cases, there is a “general lack of implementation” and the implication that access is a burdensome task (Ellcessor, 2016, p. 41).
Chapter 2 examines use and includes “intended and actual uses and users” (Ellcessor, 2016, p. 64). Ellcessor finds the neoliberal utopian and romantic discourses position disability as antithetical to the technological future. Furthermore, individuals with disabilities are not positioned as occupying the user position. Instead of being described as “you” or “us,” disabled users are positioned as “them,” the beneficiaries of technology. Such rhetoric reproduces an ideology of disability as inherently different, passive, and culturally inferior. This process creates a binary between “disabled” and “nondisabled,” locating the latter as the presumed majority for whom digital technologies are created.
Ellcessor’s third chapter examines “form” or the structural and material artifacts that control access. Building upon the work of Winner’s (1980) article on the politics of artifacts, Ellcessor details the layered connections between artifacts, their political qualities and their societal ramifications. She details intentional and unintentional ways in which “benign neglect can have the political consequence of excluding people with disabilities from public life” (Ellcessor, 2016, p. 95). Artifacts’ form, whether technological or not, can reaffirm or escalate cultural biases against individuals with disabilities. Yet, Ellcessor sees “form” as a location of possibility through utilization of elements of “universal-design,” namely, flexibility of artifacts. Resulting artifacts would provide the “greatest benefit to the greatest number of people” while recognizing that universal-design is not perfect and there is “no expectation that a single device could realistically accommodate the full range of human variation and needs” (Ellcessor, 2016, p. 114). While the idea of the totally accessible digital form is impossible, through utilization of universal design elements, the process of access is made more promising.
Chapter 4 examines content and the politics of prioritization in regard to digital content. Content is not only what is accessed in digital spaces but is “the most frequent motivation for access” (p. 126). Reflecting the findings in her chapter on form, in which functionality is prioritized over design, Ellcessor notes how types of content are similarly ranked. Specifically, she marks how “information” is prioritized, with “communication” a distant second, while “entertainment” is viewed as a luxury. Ellcessor claims this binary between “necessary” and “frivolous” accommodations and content are reflected in the ADA (1990). Such constructions, informed by notions of what “valuable” content is for people with disabilities (e.g., self-help material), are intensely political because they fuel “rehabilitation” or “cure” narratives of disability. Ellcessor (2016) reflects that “pleasure is de-prioritized by the institutional contexts of access” both in terms of entertainment and through sexual expression (p. 142). Against such thinking, engaging in “entertainment” or pleasurable content practices becomes a revolutionary act for people with disabilities.
Ellcessor’s last chapter addresses how people with disabilities experience media access. In Chapter 5, the thorough lines of all components of the “access kit” are explored. This chapter builds on Raymond Williams’ (1985) work on experience while engaging with theories of phenomenology, postructuralism, and feminism. In this section, largely built upon her interviews and ethnographic work, Ellcessor values the identities and individualism of the research participants and resists making universalizing claims about the experience of media access. She reports on participants’ expressions of frustration and how it was common for them to avoid any digital spaces. Echoing claims made in Chapter 4, participants report that appeals to noninformation-related access are treated as “outrageous request[s]” (p. 168). The issue of labor is prioritized in this section, as “the onus is placed on people with disabilities to educate others, provide expertise, and otherwise help others understand accessibility” (Ellcessor, 2016, p. 177). Such notions of self-advocacy, wherein failure is seen as a failing on behalf of the advocates, are in line with neoliberal models of selfhood. Ellcessor presents a potential for change with the notion of “cultural accessibility” which moves “past accommodation, or tolerance, to integration and calls upon society to include and integrate the different bodies, knowledges, perspectives, and possibilities offered within disability cultures” (p. 184). This concept, she says, is not hers but belongs to the participants of her research.
Restricted Access highlights the myriad of ways in which access to mediated spaces can be understood. Through her instrumental access kit, Ellcessor conveys key aspects of access as it relates to individuals with disabilities. A key strength of this work is her discussion of neoliberalism throughout the volume. By unpacking the state of society through her access kit, Ellcessor exposes the ways in which neoliberalism is present in all discussions. For example, as she considers regulation, she finds that access is viewed by institutions, organizations, and governments as a quantifiable issue: “Will it make us money? Will it save us money? Will it reduce our risk?” (Ellcessor, 2016, p. 46). Moreover, the “consumer model of disability,” through which individuals can achieve self-actualization through consumption of technologies, results in consumers becoming “locked in to relationships with service providers and given access primarily to consumptive users of technology” (Ellcessor, 2016, p. 111). Ultimately, she argues, the politics of content accessibility “reflects and reinforces ideologies of disability as a disadvantaged and neoliberal framing of pleasure as a luxury for the already-privileged” (Ellcessor, 2016, p. 133). Through multiple conversations and examples, readers may see how access, and the notion of “cultural accessibility” through collective action, might exist as antitheses to neoliberalism and capitalist structures.
In Restricted Access: Media, Disability, and the Politics of Participation, neither access nor disability exist in a binary. Each individual user, existing in different contexts with different impairments, experiences access differently. The overarching success of Ellcessor’s book, which she herself acknowledges, is due to the contributions of people with disabilities present both through her research and prior community organizing and labor (p. 189). It is through collaboration that Ellcessor sees potential for progress. Though work toward an accessible future is messy, Ellcessor’s “access kit” provides an invaluable framework through which to continue necessary progressive conversations. This groundbreaking text proves itself to be essential reading for all involved in mediated spaces including academics, professionals, policy makers, and the public, both disabled and not.