Distancing education: understandings of disability and the provision of access to content

The rapid growth of the Internet has changed the ways people communicate, teach, and learn, while at the same time increasing the isolation of those who do not have access to these technologies. This paper outlines common standards intended to ensure that web content is accessible to all users and places those standards in the context of contemporary conversations regarding access to web content. An entry point for this discussion is the politics and practice of web accessibility within higher education; excerpts from a technology discussion LISTSERV are analyzed. Within in this analysis a number of issues are considered including the legal, rhetorical, and technical strategies deployed to avoid development of broadly accessible web materials, the socially constructed nature of such terms as "disabled" and "accessible," the real effects of inaccessibility to students utilizing educational technologies, and implications for educators and policy makers.