Media representation of and for the disabled has been recharged in recent years with the expansion of new media worldwide. Interactive digital communications—such as the Internet, new varieties of voice and text telephones, and digital broadcasting—have created a need for a more innovative understanding of new media and disability issues. This engaging analysis offers a global perspective on how people with disabilities are represented as users, consumers, viewers, or listeners of new media, by policymakers, corporations, programmers, and the disabled themselves.

"An important contribution to disability studies literature and lays the groundwork for more work on technology and disability issues. Graduate students, disability studies scholars, and those exploring the sociology of digital technology will benefit from this book. Recommended." - CHOICE

"This book is wide-ranging and ambitious; substantively, it takes in subjects as diverse as cochlear implants, cyborg entities, the Internet, the multi-media access potential of digital broadcasting, the televisual representation of disabled people, Deaf culture, and text-based communication. Theoretically, the book also spans a wide range of issues in exploring the cross-national policy contexts of Australia, the U.S., the UK, and Continental Europe. Most ambitious of all is the attempt to apply postmodern insights into questions of human technology boundaries and identities. The book has an extensive bibliography, which testifies to the breadth of reading that has been undertaken for this work." - Disability & Society