Journalism and Disability in Canada: Blind and Visually Impaired Journalists Weigh In

Abstract

This roundtable dialogue foregrounds the pragmatic experiences of five disabled journalists, four of whom are blind or visually impaired. The journalists speak to the politics of disability identity in the newsroom, their career trajectories amid ableist environments, and the ways in which they grapple with the longstanding traditions of disability representation. They engage in larger theoretical conversations about the relationship between disability and media in the fields of communication, journalism, and critical disability studies.Cette table ronde met au premier plan les expériences pragmatiques de cinq journalistes handicapés, dont quatre sont aveugles ou malvoyants. Les journalistes discutent la politique autour l’identité du handicap dans la salle de presse, de leurs trajectoires de carrière dans des environnements capacitistes et comment ils affrontent les grandes traditions des représentations du handicap. Ils s’engagent dans des conversations théoriques au sujet des relations entre l’handicap et les médias dans les domaines de la communication, du journalisme et des études d’incapacité critique.

Accessibility as Aesthetic in Broadcast Media: Critical Access Theory and Disability Justice as Project-Based Learning

“…Recent public conversations about the state of disability and journalism in Canada suggest that the latter continues to misunderstand those who are marginalized disability organizers Jones & Sujani, 2021). For this reason, our approach to Accessibility as Aesthetic meant attending to the aesthetics of this work as that which can be made possible through organizing access in justice-oriented ways with access as a leading production feature rather than an "add-on.…”

Undue Hardship: A Scholarly Personal Narrative about Working with Invisible Disability in an Ableist Daily Newsroom Culture

“…In addition, the few academic studies on journalists in Canada have mostly focused on those with obvious impairments or mobility disorders, such as the academic work of Jones in 2014 ("Why This Story?") and 2019 ("Dropping the Disability Beat"), and Jones and Saujani in 2021. International research has also focused primarily on visible disabilities among journalists, such as Ellis's Disability Media Work: Opportunities and Obstacles (2016).…”