Notes from 54th International STC Conference
Minneapolis, Minnesota, May 13-16, 2007

The Ethics of Disabilities: It's a Matter of Fairness
Presented in Management SIG's Progression, "Best Practices"

Dan Voss

Voss is a Communications manager at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control in Orlando, Florida. He is an STC Fellow and immediate past manager of STC's AccessAbility SIG. He co-authored the Society's Ethical Guidelines with Shirley Hancock-Andersen and also co-authored a textbook, The Ethics of Technical Communication: Shades of Gray (John Wiley, 1997), with Lori Allen.

Session Description: This presentation explored the legal and ethical aspects of disabilities, considering questions such as the following: What constitutes a disability? How many people have disabilities? What are the employment statistics for people with disabilities? What constitutes "reasonable accommodation"? What is the AccessAbility SIG and what are its missions? How realistic is the goal of universal accessibility? If universal accessibility is not achievable, how do you decide where to compromise? Can cost be a factor?

Note: Since I was the presenter for this session, I obviously did not take notes. However, here are links to the presentation as well as the three handouts that were provided at the session, and to the award-winning web site of the AccessAbility SIG.

• "The Ethics of Disabilities: It’s a Matter of Fairness" (Presentation)
• "The Ethics of Disabilities: It’s a Matter of Fairness" (Paper)
• "IEEE and STC Ethical Guidelines Call for Fairness on Disabilities and Accessibility" (Article)
• "From Starfish to Butterfly... the Amazing Story of the AccessAbility SIG" (Paper)
• STC AccessAbility SIG web site