Response to Yergeau et al.

In “Multimodality in Motion: Disability and Kairotic Spaces” the authors explain that their work will address the “abeleist understanding of the human composer” that is implied in “multimodality.” I can honestly relate to this. While I consider the majority of my pedagogy to be multimodal, (though I admit I sometimes privilege the verbal, visual, and aural over tactile and other modes), I’m often concerned that I can’t do justice to a multimodal approach to composition and ignore a great deal of what should be addressed. The authors write if this ignoring:  “For educators, it is ethically questionable to practice pedagogies and construct spaces that categorically exclude entire classes of people.  We need to pay attention to the teaching of composition through the lens of disability studies to remind ourselves of just how much our profession has to learn, and just how much we have been content to ignore.” It’s extremely easy to ignore and to be content with it, but I think this stems from fear in not just being able to address issues, but in being able to address them to perfection. For instance, in class last week after we had created lessons with queer texts, when I asked whether the class would actually indeed consider them in their teaching all of the fear came out and it seemed the general consensus was that they would be very hesitant. The fear of not being able to address issues of ability, race, gender, sex, and sexuality, in fact make us content with ignoring them. Further, I think we aren’t willing to accept just how straight and ableist our pedagogies are. Aren’t we marginalizing when we do not address these issues? Our positioning and our positioning of others? Aren’t we enacting a straight and ableist pedagogy when we continue to use white, straight texts? We don’t realize just how comfortable we are with these invisible qualities. “When we design the intellectual spaces of composing programs, classes, assignments “with only normate bodies in mind,” ignoring the fact that disabilities exist, as Margaret Price observes in the "Space" section of this webtext, then “non-normate bodies (bodies that are gendered, classed, raced, disabled in particular ways)…disappear.” We make others invisible when we count them as invisible.

Price writes, “there are hard truths we must acknowledge about ourselves, and the spaces we’ve already built. Access must not be seen as a problem created by or solely applicable to ‘those people over there’—and, as scholars in computers and writing have shown, the marking of ‘those people’ may pertain not only to disability, but also to class, race, gender, and sexuality.” We need to complicate and conceptualize what kind of access we are giving to our students. I find it to be very heterocentric and white and middle-class. Like Jay Dolmage discusses in “Writing Against Normal: Navigating a Corporeal Turn,” we need to encourage messier writing and messier understanding of what constitutes our bodies and what constitutes normal.

One interesting part of this article was when they are discussing face-to-face interviews versus asking a candidate if they want to do an instant messaging interview or a phone interview.  I went to a CCCC panel last year and this was actually addressed. Power and perception were what was explored. They were specifically discussing how in conference call interviews the issue is that the interviewee cannot see the interviewers and a lot of communication can be occurring that they aren’t aware of because of that kind of medium.  This is totally a tangent, but I thought it was relevant.

When Stephanie Kershbaum wrote “For many deaf people, like me, it is difficult to follow an oral presentation without another channel for accessing the information that is embedded in the sound of the presenter’s voice reading their paper, and consequently, opportunities for engaging in the circulation of ideas within the presentation (or afterwards) are lost” I realized that I need to rethink a lot of my teaching and presenting. I typically have some sort of handout that supplements my presentation at conferences…perhaps a lesson I give to students…but, I don’t necessarily write out a version of my presentation that would mirror what I was saying. The handouts I use along with my visual presentation “complement one another, but they are not commensurable: They do not repeat or reinforce the same information via multiple channels” (Kershbaum). I don’t read papers when I present. I use PowerPoint or Prezi and talk and talk and talk. That needs work. I also think that I need to do more outreach with my students at the onset of the semester. I feel like I just read or reference the ADA statement and don’t offer any more than that.

I also like what the authors wrote of using online discussions alongside regular in class discussion to get students to participate in ways that they are comfortable. I think its easy to grow selfish in teaching. I often think of the things that would make me uncomfortable when it comes to class design and I strip those things out. A lot of my colleagues have used Twitter, and while I tweet every once in a while myself and have even been on panels where my colleagues have discussed its usage in the classroom, I’ve never tried it. I think I will this coming semester.

I’ve truncated Kershbaum below here, but I like her principles:

1   I'd like us to recognize disability as a natural part of the human experience.

2   I'd like us to recognize that disability is not an undergraduate-centric phenomenon. We do not magically lose our disabilities when we hit 21.

3   I'm asking that we recognize accessibility as an ongoing conversation, one that informs our pedagogical and scholarly thinking.

4 Finally, I'd like to revisit the issue of shame. We need more disabled role models, and one way of becoming an activist–scholar is to ask for accommodations, even if they're imperfect, even if they're a retrofit, even if we feel ashamed that we need to ask for them.

Some issues that I thought of while reading this article were when Sushil K. Oswal asked the question, “Would academic leaders ever imagine their students not having access to print and electronic books with a visual interface just because the audio books are cheaper to produce?” Lucy and I began to discuss this issue in the gradlounge via I-Message across the room: why doesn’t our 101 program have a multimodal (or) e-text version? For an institution that prides itself on its use of technology in the classroom, asking students to compose multimodally, and in understanding our students digital literacies, we are surprised.

I was also surprised that the Yergeau et al didn’t include an aural feature. In other words, it would have been more accessible if a voice or video read or performed everything on each page.