Chapter 9: A Critique of Disability and Accessibility Research in Technical Communication Through the Models of Emancipatory Disability Research Paradigm and Participatory Scholarship

The last two decades have seen an increase in articles about disability and accessibility within technical and professional communication (TPC) scholarship. As disabled users make up a sizeable portion of all users that our field aims to serve, this development is certainly a welcome change. However, as this chapter points out, disability and accessibility scholarship within the field has fallen short of keeping up with recent developments in the field of disability studies. Through a critique of three articles within the TPC field, the first half of this chapter highlights areas in our scholarship that need improvement in order to not only keep up with developments in other fields but also to better address the needs of this specific group of users. The second half of the chapter then introduces participatory design and participatory action research from the perspective of emancipatory research paradigm as two approaches to interface and product design, research, and pedagogy and shows how these approaches have the potential to propel TPC scholarship towards being more inclusive and mindful of users with disability. The chapter concludes with two substantive examples that foster participatory design and participatory action research as a way to illustrate the practical application of these approaches in research and pedagogy. The seven-point heuristics introduced in this chapter can be employed as an independent tool for assessing the value of disability studies-centered research and pedagogy in a variety of settings.