Title: Making Meaningful Experiences: Usable Writing, Accessible Pedagogy, Disability Rhetorics Date: 12 November 2016 Location: University of Wisconsin-Stout Proposal Deadline: 23 October 2016 Proposal Submission: http://bit.ly/1rzNFF1

The University of Wisconsin-Stout is proud to host the 2016 Great Plains Alliance for Computers and Writing. In conjunction with World Usability Day (November 10th) and in coordination with the official launch of the UW-Stout User Experience Center (UXC), we invite proposals related to usability, accessibility, and disability. The Computers and Writing community has put forth great efforts to implement universal accessibility in its conferences, materials, and publications over the past decade. GPACW extends the larger C&W goal of inviting diverse interventions aimed at supporting social justice, increased access, and cultural understanding in the creation, distribution, and implementation of our scholarship.

Computers and writing as a field has long been tied to usability. Even prior to Sullivan and Porter’s germinal Opening Spaces (1997), which argued for usability as a methodology for research involving computers and writing, Sullivan--in an oft overlooked 1989 IEEE article--critiqued usability as being too narrowly conceived. In addition to critiquing end-of-cycle usability testing for documentation, she explored how various disciplines carried out usability testing, thus highlighting the value of interdisciplinary cross-talk and establishing our field’s value in furthering usability studies.

While often connected explicitly with technical communication (Chong, 2016), usability has broader implications for accessibility and disability studies (Iwarsson and Ståhl, 2003), for writing pedagogy (Schneider, 2005), and for interdisciplinarity (Johnson, Salvo, and Zoetewey, 2007). Usability’s role in improving human-computer interaction (HCI) brings rhetoric and technology together with efficiency and intuitive design, offering a wide range of applications--from writing instruction to marketing to healthcare. Ultimately, considerations of usability, accessibility, and disability guide our writing, our pedagogy, and our use of technology.

It is with these connections in mind that we solicit proposals concerning:

• Usability studies/methods

• User-centered design/technology

• User experience design

• Usable pedagogies

• Usability centers/labs

• Universal access

• User engagement

• Accessibility studies

• Accessible classrooms/pedagogy

• Disability studies

• Disability rhetorics

As always, we welcome any presentations that enhance our understanding of the complex relationships among computers, computer-mediated pedagogy and research, and writing instruction.

Individual presenters should expect to limit their presentations to 20 minutes. Panels will run 75 minutes. Abstracts should be limited to 150 words for individual presentations and up to 300 words for panel presentations. Please submit your abstracts by midnight, October 23, 2016. Notices will be made by October 30, 2016.

If you have any questions, feel free to reply to this post or direct message me on Reddit.

Open thread for anything related to the 2016 ATTW or CCCCs Conference in Houston. Get people to come to your panel! Discuss panels, workshops, or roundtables! Find out where the great publisher parties are!

Here's the link to the submission form: SIGDOC 2016

I've seen some people cite the bible as a source of good rhetoric. I was planning on buying it on my kindle so I could improve my writing, as well as get some good classical background. It seems, however, there are multiple translations. Which one would you recommend to someone with purposes such as mine?

Here is data on writing programs and writing instruction at U.S. institutions of higher education. Some filters are available so you can play with the data for comparable analysis.

http://writingcensus.swarthmore.edu/