Full text loading...
-
Wat maakt elektronische literatuur (niet) toegankelijk?
- Amsterdam University Press
- Source: Nederlandse Letterkunde, Volume 28, Issue 2, Dec 2023, p. 213 - 238
-
- 01 Dec 2023
Abstract
When digital media are described as ‘(in)accessible’, this can refer to several things: its availability, approachability, or accessibility to disabled people. As a result, electronic literature is either hailed or dismissed based on an imprecise notion of accessibility. In this article, I analyze works of electronic literature through the lens of these different understandings of accessibility in order to pinpoint the assumptions surrounding digital media about the situatedness and capacities of the reader. I address the availability of electronic literature by connecting the reading experience to convergence culture, the gift economy, and locality. I deepen the insight into reading experience by analyzing the approachability of electronic literature in relation to the Russian-Formalist concept of ‘defamiliarization’. To understand this defamiliarized experience of literature, I analyze how digital accessibility to disabled people influences the writing and reading of electronic literature, positing access as a form of ‘writing under constraint’.