Dragga, S. & Voss, D. (2003). Hiding humanity: verbal and visual ethics in accident reports. Technical Communication, 50 (1), (pp. 61-82).

In Sam Dragga and Dan Voss’s (2003) article “Hiding Humanity: Verbal and Visual Ethics in Accident Reports,” they identified “how the reporting of human injuries and fatalities in accident reports often strips victims of their humanity and hides the tragic human consequences of technological failures from individuals trying to devise appropriate public policy, establish effective safety regulations, and modify or abolish dangerous industrial processes—government officials, company executives, labor representatives, community activists, and ordinary citizens” (p. 61). Dragga and Voss reviewed a series of accident reports and how they portrayed human beings in both the words used and the illustrations, the focus on objects in the accident, the legal and ethical factors governing the publication of people’s photos, the rights to privacy or lack thereof, and the proposition of techniques to humanize reports. Dragga and Voss’s purpose was to use technical communicators’ skills to “communicate clearly the human dimension of accidents, making the loss of lives and the anguish of survivors impossible to ignore” by being sensitive, creative, and ethical (p. 79). Dragga and Voss’s intended audience was technical communicators writing and illustrating accident reports. Dragga and Voss made a solid case for their argument by providing numerous examples of the omission of the victims in accident reports and covering their bases by pointing out the legal issues that accident reporters face when publicizing sensitive information about victims.