Signed language interpreters’proximity to significant political figures and entertainers invites the nondisabled gaze. The spotlight on interpreters in the media is a symptom of celebrity culture intersected with toxic benevolence. This paper considers media attention given interpreters as a site of tension surrounding attitudes toward access for disabled people. Signed language interpretation is provided for deaf people’s access. The presence of signed language interpreters in public spaces and their proximity to significant figures subjects signed languages to public consumption, which is then rendered into sources of entertainment for nonsigning people. The reduction of signed language interpreters to entertainment material signifies the value placed upon accessibility, creates hostile workspaces for signed language interpreters, and reinforces notions of signed languages as novelties. Such actions have adverse effects on signing deaf people’s linguistic human rights and their ability to participate as informed citizens in their respective communities. The media, its audiences, and some of the ways that interpreters have embraced such attention have actively co-produced signed language interpretation as a venue for ableism, linguistic chauvinism, and displacement.

Deaf people are a heterogeneous global minority singularly linked by technology. I posit that deaf people wield the cutting-edge of innovation by developing or repurposing digital technologies in deaf education as a means to leverage the affordances of visuospatial sign languages and multimodal communication. Throughout, I investigate a nexus of historical, cultural, social, political, and ideological struggle where deaf people use their own power and self-determination to counteract harmful forces like oppression and exclusion. To do this, I synthesize the digital environments of deaf education (DE²) and articulate a theory of deaf educational power centered on the interdependence of digital knowledge modes and the deaf users driving their development. I situate modes as a fundamental unit of analysis. Multimodality is related to power and ethics in education and assists in critically analyzing DE². Multimodal theory illustrates how power is used in DE² and shows ecological relationships between pedagogical ethics and knowledge co-construction by deaf students and educators. In sum; deaf people use multimodal technologies to construct deaf-centric educational power. Three major findings are categorized: (1) the purposes for which DE² are designed, (2) the practices constitutive of DE², and (3) disciplines represented in DE² research. Two exemplars from category 3 are shown and analyzed. Both interrelate Deaf Culture, sign language, and digital education technologies. One is situated in a deaf student protest about language and communication access. The second is rooted in the multilingual characteristics of an international consortium related to deaf science epistemologies. Overall, I elucidate a social history of technology in deaf education to show that DE² is a globalized phenomenon transcending geopolitical boundaries.

The article investigates various kinds of the strategies of technosensation in artistic project based on bio-parametrisation’s techniques. The category of technosensation is in the article referred to the considerations of Luciana Parisi and Marie-Luise Angerer to define the relationship between body affectivity and computational systems (primarily in relation to automated decision-making systems and machine learning processes). The context for these considerations is the reflection on “technological redlining” as a strategy for racial, gender, and (dis)ability profiling of computational systems, which generate social exclusion, inequalities and oppressiveness. In the article, the author considers (with reference to the considerations of Parisi, Bernard Stiegler, Yuk Hui and Gabbrielle M. Johnson) to what extent the algorithmic biases are the result of automation, and to what extent they result from the absorption of uncertainty, randomness and technodiversity. Technosensation strategies are considered in relation to the artistic practices of Zach Blas, Maja Smrekar, Marija Griniuk and others, pointing to subversive, critical and affirmative variants of technological functionality and agency. The presented projects prove that the functionality of computational technologies is not bipolar, but it is developing as a spectrum of nuanced mechanisms, both in the area of oppressive-exclusionary systems and emancipatory strategies

The author of this paper uses Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory to discusses the anti-shipper movement and its call for exclusion of problematic content from online repositories of fanwork. Anti-shippers, who oppose indiscriminate inclusion of potentially harmful content and its creators in the field of fan production, are a relatively new and vocal faction inside the field. While the research on antis has focused on their methods of harassment and its effects on fan community, this paper discusses the conditions inside the field before the movement’s emergence, focusing on the affordances and terms of service of online fanwork repositories. The author proposes to treat the question of exclusion of sensitive content and its creators as one concerning the field’s autonomy, and presents the anti controversy as a way for newcomers to establish their position in the field and change its problematic.

The article presents Jacques Derrida’s reflections on photography. Although the philosopher himself declared his “lack of competence” in matters concerning visual arts and, more broadly, the image because his domain was word/text, he often spoke/wrote about the nature of the image, including the photographic one, as he was often provoked/invited to make such statements. Derrida did not create a coherent theory of the photographic image and it was never his ambition. However, scattered in several texts, his original reflections on the essence of photography – not in the commonly accepted thinking about this medium as the phenomenon of “writing of light,” but rather a medium that uses a kind of “writing of shade” (or sciagraphy) – force us to reflect and think critically. This article presents analyses and interpretations of Derrida’s texts in which the problem of photography is merely a context for broader philosophical considerations (The Postcard, Memoirs of the Blind, Aletheia, Rights of Inspection), as well as those in which photography becomes the basic material of reflection (The Deaths of Roland Barthes, Copy, Archive, Signature, Athens, Still Remains). Derrida’s thinking (even in darkness) turns out to be worth considering as reading his “amateur” texts on photography proves that his voice can be inspiring in this field as well.

Livestreaming is an opportunity to participate in digital social life, both for streamers and their audience. This participation is associated with the possibility of spreading content considered as socially harmful. Although trash streams have been popular in Central Europe for several years, they are still not fully characterized. Previous studies define them rather operationally – for the needs of a given analysis. This study fills that gap. Based on long-term observation of trash streamers activity and review of the literature and press reports, the authors provide a comprehensive description of trash streams pointing to differences in nomenclature used in Poland and worldwide. The article also provides methodological guidelines for the analysis of trash streams. The authors developed these guidelines on the basis of the analysis of the literature and their own research experience.

This paper illustrates how, over the course of the last two centuries, the autonomous access of the visually impaired to reading material has expanded. The author coins the term “reading emancipation” to describe these processes. She illustrates it by referring to her own research involving in-depth interviews with the visually impaired readers regarding the use of various forms of books, such as books printed in Braille, talking books and e-books. The author also traces the historical background of the transformation of alternative book formats, from the development and spread of Braille code to digital books. The description of the evolution of book formats is set against the background of the transformations taking place in Europe with a strong emphasis on the impact of these transformations on Poland.

This paper is based on fifteen in-depth interviews with blind translators and interpreters from Poland. Due to the age-diverse sample of participants, three periods based on available assistive technologies have been isolated: the analogue period, the transitional period and the current, digital period. The paper discusses in detail challenges and opportunities faced by the interviewees working in each of these periods, with particular emphasis on accounts of analogue period and transition into digital technologies provided by three veteran translators.

The data is analysed within the theoretical framework provided by Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of capitals. The results of the study suggest that there is a growing gap between the volumes of embodied and objectivised cultural capital indispensable for sighted and blind translators. The more technologically advanced the world of translators becomes, the more surplus technologies have to be mastered by the blind. And some of the digital tools which have become essential for translators are hardly accessible for the blind.

In conclusion, the author argues that modern technologies, far from eliminating the need for additional volumes of cultural and social capital, have actually aggravated it. Unless digital translation tools and settings are made accessible blind and low sighted translators and interpreters will continue facing exclusion from the labour market. Moreover, looking at the experiences of the older generation of successful translators and interpreters with visual impairment, we can draw conclusions on what factors sup ort the inclusion of younger generations of blind translators and interpreters in the labour market.

* The research reported in this paper was financed by the research grant no. DEC-2013/09/N/HS2/02096 of the Polish National Centre of Science.

Liberariness of Literature for Children

The article suggests to consider children’s literature as an example of liberature. The author refers to the use of this term as popularized by Zenon Fajfer and further developed by Krystyna Zabawa, who compared works of liberature to author’s books and picturebooks. The article explains the phenomenon of liberature and examines selected literary works while pointing to their liberature features – Katsumi Komagata’s First Look: Beginning for Babies, a volume designed by Emilia Dziubak in the series “Rok w,” and One written by Sarah Crossan. Using terms such as multiliterate, intersemioticity, or polysemioticity, the author proves t at many children’s texts can be described as examples of liberature – even when it is not explicit.