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Usability and Accessibility: True Equality in the Infoverse

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The Internet allows those with different abilities to access information in their own way. Are you contributing to opening that access up? (Source: Pexels Stock Images) Usability and accessibility are a human right. This is especially true of the World Wide Web, where anyone and everyone should be able to access and contribute to the infoverse. No corner of the internet and its trove of information should be inaccessible. While adaption tools can accommodate sites or content not created with accessibility in mind, it would be most beneficial and downright revolutionary to have more creators lead their process with accessibility as the priority.  An example that comes to mind is the student publication at my workplace recently reformatting the printing layout to improve readability. Using larger, more widely spaced fonts along with easy-to-follow layouts helped simplify the visual impression of the pages, easing the reading experience. This meant compromises were made for the paper...
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Digital Writing for the Real World

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As we near the end of this Digital Writing course, themes are being tied together. All the tools identified in this course serve a greater purpose than just looking better on a digital platform: they help convey messages more strongly and widely. Further, these lessons educate readers and viewers to participate ethically and strategically in content. Once-hidden agendas are illuminated when we analyze the subtle (or glaring) ways that media is targeted and angled for the sake of an argument. Entering the digital writing world with this advantage makes greater creators. Equipped with this knowledge, the new wave of digital writers will create online content that is more attractive and approachable. The new era of accessibility starts with these moves.    Digitally Literate Netizens of the New Digital Era This National Center for Education Statistics data graphs reading and math rates on a general decline since about the start or just before the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic....
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Visual Rhetoric: How Visuals Communicate to Readers

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     Hypertext visual rhetoric is the language analysis tool needed for the future. The more we move our lives online, the more we must reinforce the hybridization of our literacy to include visual and verbal elements. Digital writing rhetoric is an ongoing conversation between old and new principles. This represents the interactive and interconnected nature of digital communication in hypertext form. It is the conversation, not the statement, question, or response but the whole union of it all actively at play. This makes this medium exciting because it moves as quickly as our brains form arguments, changing the outcome and current conclusion, which will in turn be recreated, remastered, and reproduced. The internet has strengthened the adage that nothing is new, only recreated.   At times, the visual overcommunicates and loses its balance with the rest of the content as seen in this Instagram reel example by creator @esquire.sports (not affiliated with the pu...
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Digital Demands: Are you up for the challenge?

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                                                 Designed by Freepik Digital Speed Slowed Down by Historic Habits      In this new wild and wonderful age of digital technology, changes and updates go a mile a millisecond, making it hard to keep up. Making a blog stand out in this huge blogosphere requires an extra commitment. One reassurance of this possibility is that even though brand new and ever-evolving digital writing still has a standard that relies upon classical principles introduced thousands of years ago by Greek philosopher Aristotle. He taught ethos, pathos, and logos as pillars of any good argument. Digital writing, though versatile in its application to many circumstances, still adheres to these concepts in the quality standard of its presentation, openness to connection, and information.       These standards may ...
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Digital Literacy Exercises Our Willingness to Participate

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How Can Participation Be An Expression of Digital Literacy?      Few can say they fondly recall being asked to volunteer or subjected to involuntary participation in activities or events whether in school as a youth or at a demanding (toxic?) job as an adult. Yet, the digital era has unlocked an accessible means of participating from the comfort of our internet connection. Through this portal, we are granted access to communities and special interests we may not have otherwise been able to find much less involve ourselves. These newly established social connections made in the digital format require that we participate in terms of our attention and our time. Participation by reposting, tweeting, liking, or even searching online can translate to real power in the real world, especially when angled toward a social or political activist organizing purpose. Participation is a pillar of digital literacy, which asks us to engage mindfully and ethically with an eye for deception...
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