Media and Disability 2001 Abstracts
Media and Disability Interest Group
“Disability” as Diversity in Public Relations Textbooks • Louella Benson-Garcia, Pepperdine University • The purpose of this study was to determine the extent, if any, that public relations textbooks address the diversity category of “disability.” Of the 17 textbooks analyzed, 12 did not. Four listed people with disabilities in a one- or two-sentence laundry list of diversity groups. The most substantial – a 69-word passage on eliminating writer bias. Results indicated a need for interest/advocacy groups to proactively provide curriculum materials and other information to educators, many of whom are textbook authors.
Primetime Portrayal of Persons with Disabilities: A Study in Representation, Stereotype and Impact • Dennis J. Ganahl & Mark Arbuckle, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale • This study examined the presence and portrayal of persons with visually detected physical impairments during prime time network television commercials. The research coded 1,337 prime time commercials during a 1999 sweeps rating period. First this study identified Primary and Secondary Actors with visually detected physical impairments. Then it categorized those actors’ roles according to Nelson’s Stereotypes. After being counted and categorized, the roles were evaluated for their potentially positive or negative impact. Broadly, this research found that persons with visually detected physical impairments were virtually nonexistent and only half of the acting roles could be categorized according to one of Nelson’s Stereotypes.
Leaving up to the Industry: People with Disabilities and the Telecommunications Act of 1996 • Tomoko Kanayama, Ohio University • Telecommunications policy becomes more important to solve the problem of the disabled in the information society. This paper examined whether Section 255 of the 1996 Act can achieve the goal. The paper found that this regulation remains more on encouragement to the industry to consider accessibility issues for the disabled. If the FCC will continue to rely on the voluntary efforts of the industry, the disabled will not enjoy the benefits of access to telecommunications systems.
A Right to the News: Accessibility of Newspaper Web sites to the Visually Impaired • Kathleen K. Olson, Lehigh University • Image-rich Web pages are often difficult for screen readers and other assistive technologies to interpret, limiting their usefulness to the visually impaired. This study uses the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) guidelines for Web developers to determine whether the top daily papers in the United States fulfill the Priority 1 requirement of accessibility for the disabled by providing textual alternatives to the visual content on their home pages.
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