Considering Disabilities: Your whole audience

Considering Disabilities: YOUR WHOLE AUDIENCE

Remember that considering your whole audience means thinking about members with varying abilities and special needs. If you are writing to veterans in a VA hospital or to a senior citizens’ group, for example, you can be sure that many audience members will be living with some form of disability. But it’s very likely that any audience will include members with disabilities—from anorexia to dyslexia, multiple sclerosis, or attention deficit disorder—and that there may be significant differences within disabilities. Approximately one in five Americans are living with a disability. All writers need to think carefully about how their words reach out and connect with such very diverse audiences.