| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立陽明大學 === 科技與社會研究所 === 103 === Abstract
At all times and in all places, we frquently found evidences of information exchange through auditory, tactile and other sensations other than visual. Some who superior in these sensations even be remembered in history, such as Homer, Borges, China’s mathematician Wei, Poh. But nowadays, we rely more and more upon visually reading to exchange information. Considering the cerruent studies of history of reading and STS studies, the knowledge content of reading, technical practices and marginal users seem absent, especially within those visually disabled users. Therefore, this thesis exams the situation faced by visually disabled readers under comtemporary visually reading culture on the one hand, on the other hand it iinvestigates how the latter is formed, its modern founadation, and the knowledge content. By reviewing primary and secondary literature, field surveying in library resource for visually disabled readers and “assistive tehcnology assessment” hold by Tamkang University students‘ resource center, interviewing relevant users, and coupled with the discussion on technology and knowledge paradugm in STS studies, this thesis tries to put foward several points below. First, the contemporary visually reading culture is composed of an “eye-to-brain”mechanic paradigm and highly strives for speed. Second, under such paradigm and culture comes out a reading technological system, which is stable and difficult to change from the font size, specification to publication in books, and which marginalize and is depended by the technological system used by visually disabled readers. Third, in oreder to sustain this reading technological system, the joints between technological objects and human users and how they connected need to be considered, that include the assessments process. Forth, the operation of the system is not only theough the top-down assessments, but also relevant to the complicated and mutually affected relations within visually disabled users and their reading technologies. These relations result in limited reading technology and knowledge accessed to the visually disabled readers, and the assessment settings are often not consistent with the actual scenes of use. Finally, this thesis attempts to provide some way out of this marginal and dependent relations faced by visually disabled readers.
keywords: reading, technology studies, visual disability studies, vision
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