Accessibility in Digital Environments

Language, Law, and the Question of Inclusion

George Williams
Associate ProfessorDepartment of EnglishUniversity of South Carolina UpstateWebsiteRead Bio

Everyone agrees that accessibility in digital environments for people with disabilities is an important goal. (Well, not everyone...) And yet most resources in digital environments present accessibility obstacles. Why? And what can we do about that? Everyone agrees that the Digital Humanities is an increasingly important field of activity in the humanities, a field that emphasizes openness and inclusion. (Well, not everyone...) And yet many scholars report feeling unwelcome and excluded. Why? And what can we do about that? This presentation will address these topics and consider how these two sets of questions might be related.

Dr. Williams is an Associate Professor of English at the University of South Carolina Upstate where he has led a research project on accessible website development. His research and teaching interests include eighteenth-century studies, orality & literacy, the digital humanities, and disability studies in the humanities. He is a regular contributor to Profhacker.com, BrailleSC.org, and EighteenthCentury.org.

Media

A continuously updated schedule of talks is also available on the Digital Dialogues page.

Unable to attend the events in person? Archived podcasts can be found on the MITH website, and you can follow our Digital Dialogues Twitter account @digdialog as well as the Twitter hashtag #mithdd to keep up with live tweets from our sessions. Viewers can watch the live stream as well.

All talks free and open to the public. Attendees are welcome to bring their own lunches.

Contact: MITH (mith.umd.edu, mith@umd.edu, 301.405.8927).