Perspectivizing and Personizing depictions in the visualization of disability

The visualization of disability is shaped by how visual elements are configured to frame a particular perspective and narrative about disability: a strategy introduced here as the perspectivization of disability . These configurations can be conceptualized along a continuum that extends from perspectivizing , where attention is directed to an individual’s impairment or disability, to personizing , where the social actor is portrayed primarily as a person beyond impairment. This continuum encompasses the visibility and salience of signs of disability, the characterization of persons and their disabilities and the visual engagement between the depicted persons and viewers, as well as the overall emotive dimension or underlying tone evoked. The cumulative attitudinal meanings conveyed through these images can be further positioned along a second continuum, ranging from Enabling to Disabling representations. Together, these two intersecting axes constitute the Visual Discourses of Disability (ViDD) framework—a tool for analyzing how disability is visually constructed in still media images. This chapter, however, focuses only on the first continuum, examining the visual strategies and semiotic choices involved in Perspectivizing and Personizing representations.