About Me

Sarah Lewthwaite
A picture of me from in 2012, enjoying the CSUN conference on technology and disability in San Diego.

Hi. I’m Dr Sarah Lewthwaite, I’m an education, disability studies and social media researcher. I work at the National Centre for Research Methods, at the University of Southampton, investigating the pedagogies of advanced research methods teaching. You can read more about my work at NCRM on the Pedagogy of Methodological Learning project site. I’m an Honorary Research Fellow of the Learning Sciences Research Institute at the University of Nottingham. My doctoral research investigated students experiences of disability and social networks in higher education.

This is my personal blog which I am using to explore and share interests that continue to flow from my research. In particular, I’ve recently been focussing on the intersection between disability studies and human computer interaction, the sociology of (in)accessibility and developing accessible digital research methods, and more recently the pedagogies of teaching and learning accessibility.  I’m interested in the ways in which Web 2.0 is shifting and enforcing the boundary between disabled and non-disabled. I’m also interested in engaging design and developer communities with theory from disability studies, to enhance current practice and help make the web a better ‘place’.

This blog documents my reflections on methods, PhD processes, and my wider research community . I’m a member of the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) and Sheffield Hallam’s Disability Research Forum.

For details of my teaching, supervision and other academic aspects of my work, please visit my staff page at the University of Southampton.

This blog features a mix of ingredients designed to make content available to all. I use WordPress, and the Blaskan Theme. I chose Blaskan as the makers have attended to WAI-ARIA wherever possible, and it renders well on mobile. I also use an automatic podcasting service Odiogo. This generates the “Listen Now” button which, when clicked, will read my blog posts to you.  There is also an RSS feed and an accessible email subscription available if you want to access content through a different viewer.  Finally, for up to the minute content, you can follow me on Twitter. If you don’t like twitter, try Easy Chirp, a web-accessible alternative to the Twitter.com website. It rocks.

Finally, please note that the views expressed here are mine and do not represent the views of any company, institute or organisation with which I am associated.

 

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