Colton, J. S. & Walton, R. (2015). Disability as insight into social justice pedagogy in technical communication. The Journal of Interactive Technology & Pedagogy 8, (pp. 1-13).

In Jared S. Colton and Rebecca Walton’s (2015) article “Disability as Insight into Social Justice Pedagogy in Technical Communication,” they proposed that, “considerations of disability can provide insight into the relevance of social justice to technical communication practice” (p. 1). Colton and Walton analyzed the definition of social justice, reviewed the various aspects of social action (e.g., service learning, community-based research, action/activist research, civic engagement), the establishment of an ethical framework to insight social justice, the individualistic aspect of the virtue of ethics, studied three designed undergraduate courses with various methods for collecting data about the relationship between social justice and technical communication, discovered an emerging pattern of the students’ need and ability to engage in inclusive and accessible communication design, and the students’ awareness of the connections between social justice and technical communication. Colton and Walton’s purpose was to propose the strategy of “introducing issues of social justice to students by initially pointing their attention to disability and its immediate and more accessible exigency to communication design” (p. 8). Colton and Walton’s intended audience was instructors wishing to implement social justice practices with communication design and students becoming more aware of social justice in the classroom. Colton and Walton demonstrated a clear understanding of the topic they were arguing and approached their study in an ethical way that benefited both the instructors and the students.