Giving Voice

Giving Voice offers a rare view into the lives of families too often overlooked in our research and debates over new mobile and educational technologies. It rests on a subtle analysis of the intersection of disability, privilege, and varied institutional conditions. The book is filled with vivid stories and important reminders of how respectful attention to the marginalized can inspire and expand our perspectives.

Mizuko Ito, Professor in Residence, University of California Humanities Research Institute; coauthor of Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out

This brilliant and timely book offers a powerful new perspective on technology and how it shapes our worlds. Giving Voice is an outstanding study of a neglected yet central area of media and society—how mobile technologies are designed, shaped, and implemented for people with disabilities. A milestone in digital technology research, it is destined to be a classic text in media research.

Gerard Goggin, Professor of Media and Communications, University of Sydney

This cogent and compelling account of families with children navigating developmental disabilities breaks new ground and forces us to reconsider some fundamental truths about the power and meaning of voice. This book will quickly become a must-read for every designer, educator, and scholar coming to grips with how an ecosystem of apps and portable devices has evolved into a panacea for the systemic inequalities faced by people with disabilities.

Mary L. Gray, Senior Researcher, Microsoft Research; Associate Professor, Indiana University; author of Out in the Country: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural America

Giving Voice reopens the venerable question of new media's effects on young people in invigorating ways, both through its ethnographic focus on iPad adoption and through its nuanced account of the meaning of voices and voice technologies. I came away from this book impressed at how difficult it is now, as perhaps it has ever been, to distinguish between face-to-face and mediated communication. Alper shows just how complex any interface between people can be!

John Durham Peters, Professor of English and Film and Media Studies, Yale University; author of The Marvelous Clouds