“I can read, I just can't see”: a disability rights-based perspective on reading by listening
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-10-2020-0169 |
| Published date | 22 December 2021 |
| Date | 22 December 2021 |
| Pages | 176-191 |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
| Author | Anna Lundh |
“I can read, I just can’t see”:
a disability rights-based
perspective on reading by listening
Anna Lundh
Libraries, Archives, Records and Information Science,
School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry, Curtin University,
Perth, Australia and
The Swedish School of Library and Information Science, University of Bor
as,
Bor
as, Sweden
Abstract
Purpose –The aim of the paper is to create a greater understanding of how people who are blind or vision
impaired describe their use of audio-based reading technologies, with a particular focus on how they reason
about whether the use of these technologies can be understood in terms of reading.
Design/methodology/approach –The study is part of the emerging research area Critical Studies of
Readingand drawstheoretical inspirationfrom Document Theory,New Literacy Studiesand CriticalDisability
Studies. The article presents a discourse analysis of how 16 university students in Australia who are blind or
vision impaired and use audio-based reading technologies describe this use in semi-structured interviews.
Findings –The participants relate to a division between ‘real’reading and reading by listening, where the
latter is constructed as an exception and is connected to the subject position of being blind or vision impaired.
However, resistance is also noticeable, where reading by listening is constructed as something that is normal,
and as a right.
Originality/value –The article is a theoretical and empirical contribution to the ongoing discussion on the
use of audio-based reading technologies. It presents perspectives from the users of these technologies and
argues why a specific understanding of this use is important.
Keywords Critical disability studies, Critical studies of reading, Discourse analysis, Document theory,
New literacy studies, Print disabilities, Reading, Reading by listening, Talking books, Text-to-speech,
University students, Vision impairment
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
The aim of this paper is to create a greater understanding of how people who are blind or
vision impaired describe their use of audio-based reading technologies. These types of
technologies engage hearing as the primary sense used for reading, rather than vision (as
JD
78,7
176
© Anna Lundh. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative
Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create
derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full
attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://
creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode
The author wishes to thank the research participants for their time and willingness to share their
experiences and views of their reading practices. She would also like to thank Mats Dolatkhah,
Ase
Hedemark, Scott Hollier, Linn
ea Lindsk€
old, Elisa Tattersall Wallin and participants at the research
seminar at the Linnaeus Centre for Research on Learning, Interaction and Mediated Communication in
Contemporary Society (LinCS) for their valuable input during the preparations for and the writing of this
paper; Christine Yates for her excellent help with the transcriptions of the interviews and the English
editing of the manuscript; and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions.
Funding: This study has been funded by the Curtin Research Fellowship, Curtin University, Perth,
Australia.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0022-0418.htm
Received 8 October 2020
Revised 11 August 2021
Accepted 14 August 2021
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 78 No. 7, 2022
pp. 176-191
Emerald Publishing Limited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-10-2020-0169
with print or screen-based text) or touch (as with braille) (see Tattersall Wallin, 2021). They
include built-in or add-on screen readers and text-to-speech tools for mobile devices, laptops
and computers; talking books produced specifically for people with print disabilities; and
commercially produced audiobooks. In particular, the article focuses on how people who are
blind or vision impaired, reason about whether the use of these technologies can be
understood in terms of reading.
People with or without print disabilities such as vision impairments and blindness are
increasingly using audio-based technologies to read, and it has been suggested that these
reading activities should be conceptualised as reading by listening (Tattersall Wallin, 2021).
However, since the inception of talking books over a hundred years ago, there has been a
discussion about whether the use of audio versions of books and other types of documents
should be regarded as reading. Rubery (2016) gives a historical account of how this debate
has taken shape within the blindness communities in the Anglosphere and describes how it
has been based on exclusion, opposition, and conflict, and the notion that only one mode of
reading can be regarded as ‘real’reading. This discussion is ongoing (see Tattersall Wallin,
2021), both within and outside the blindness community. Thus, researchers wanting to
contribute to a greater understanding of the reading practices of audio readers –practices
that are both under-researched and under-theorised –still have to argue for the
understanding of the use of audio-based technologies for reading as reading activities and
reading practices.
The argument that the use of audio-based technologies for reading can be understood in
terms of reading is a disability rights-based argument. It might seem paradoxical, but
highlighting the audio reading practices of people with print disabilities is an endeavour
toward having these practices recognised as mainstream rather than outside the norm.
However, in many regards, reading by listening is constructed as an exception. For example,
when considering access to published books –in countries where the production and
dissemination of accessible media are relatively well-coordinated –only 5–7% of all titles are
accessible to people with print disabilities (Harpur, 2017, p. 7). Whilst an ideal situation would
be that all text was formatted in ways that make it accessible to everyone –no matter what
tools they use for reading –the current situation is very different. However, until this ideal
situation is a reality, it is important to draw attention to the various ways in which people do
read, as well as to the mechanisms that prevent people from accessing text in their preferred
formats. One such mechanism is how the use of audio-based reading technologies is
described and understood; the view that reading by listening is not ‘the real thing’may have
detrimental consequences for people to whom this way of reading is a necessary means to
accessing text.
In their seminal text “The Social Life of Documents”,Brown and Duguid (1996) emphasise
that new types of “document technologies”might entail the potential for social change, but
that such changes “will be the result of a great deal of social work, conflict, coordination, and
creativity, conducted around but not determined by the technology”(Brown and Duguid,
1996,“Documents, Determination, and Enabling”). This article discusses how the use of
audio-based reading technologies, such as screen readers and text-to-speech tools, talking
books and audiobooks, can be theoretically framed as reading. The article also presents an
analysis of how people who are blind or vision impaired describe their use of these types of
technologies. Thus, this article should be understood as a way of taking part in the “social
work”–or social and discursive negotiation –concerning digital audio-based reading
technologies.
However, the argument made is not based on an uncritical technology optimism where the
challenges that people with print disabilities face are seen as possible to resolve through
technologies only. Nor is it an attempt to take sides in dichotomised and normative
discussions where audio is put in opposition to print or braille (see Rubery, 2016). Rather, the
“I can read, I
just can’t see”
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