https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0011-9813
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Lorenzo Dalvit, Back to Whose “Normal”? Personal Reflections of a Visually-Impaired Academic at a Small South African University, Communication, Culture and Critique, Volume 14, Issue 2, June 2021, Pages 328–331, https://doi.org/10.1093/ccc/tcab012
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In this article, I reflect on my personal experience as an academic researching and teaching in the areas of digital media and mobile communication with a focus on inequalities and a person with severe visual impairment. I have always regarded my employer, a small residential university in South Africa, as a compassionate and supportive institution which tries within reason to accommodate my disability (e.g., by assigning me a graduate assistant, by relieving me of exam invigilation duties, by supporting conference travel for an accompanying person and, more recently, by welcoming my guide dog at the workplace). However, the current crisis highlighted how subtle aspects of my working life are affected by covert ableist assumptions. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, South Africa implemented one of the strictest lockdown regulations in the world. The 2020 academic year had barely started when my university, as many others across the country and the world, sent staff and students home and enforced a sudden shift to online communication, teaching and learning. Among a chorus of voices expressing general disconcert, I came across a message by a colleague with an invisible disability who, like me, seemed relieved at the prospect of working from home. Subsequently, I have noticed sporadic online articles by students and academics with different disabilities and from various national and educational contexts, further confirming my own feelings.
