The general point is that digitizing may
appear straightforward, but producing an out-
come that is fit for purpose requires more
careful thought. For example, it is easy to scan
a manuscript and therefore archive it in an
online depository. But unless some metadata
about the document are also provided (year of
publication, title, abstract etc.), then it will be
hard for potential users to search the deposi-
tory and extract what they are looking for.
It may also be beneficial to convert the
scanned image using text recognition soft-
ware, permitting all documents to be searched
for key words. However, this all takes time and
money, as well as the development of stand-
ards and protocols to ensure consistency in
how information is stored, catalogued and
updated – such as those developed for the
JSTOR scholarly journal archive (www.jstor.
org) that allow searching of the author, title,
abstract and/or full text for all or a subset of
the journals archived, for all or particular
dates, and for all or specific types of journal
content (e.g. article, review or opinion piece)
(Schonfeld, 2003).
There is also the issue of error management.
Using manual digitizing tables and software to
capture the geographies of schools and roads
from a paper map assumes that the map is
of reasonable quality, having not shrunk or
stretched, and requires concentration from
the person digitizing who may easily make
mistakes (from a slight hand shake or from
fatigue or boredom!). A lack of attention could
lead to road sections that do not meet (an
undershoot) or the creation of a new spur
when the road is drawn past the intended
intersection (an overshoot). If not detected,
the errors could propagate and lead to mis-
leading analyses of the data concerned.
Digitization is always a change to the
original. Whether it matters depends on the
nature of the change and how the digital ver-
sion is applied. It could be argued that MP3s
are inferior to vinyl records because they
have a lower frequency range. But then have
you ever tried to carry a thousand seven-inch
singles? rh
Suggested reading
Clarke (2003); Schonfeld (2003).
disability Conventionally understood as the
state of being physically and/or mentally dif-
ferent from some assumed ‘norm’ of human
corporeal and/or psychological functioning,
the term applies to people with animpairment
that supposedly limits their ability to perform
activities in the manner taken as ‘normal’ for
a human being. Disability is often framed
negatively, couched as ‘loss’ (e.g. of a limb or
vision) or ‘lack’ (e.g. of mobility or reasoning
skills), with scant attention paid to the experi-
ences and aspirations of the people affected.
Proponents of themedical modelof disability
stress the apparently ‘damaged’bodyor mind
of an individual, and invite a personal narra-
tive of ‘tragedy’ followed by ‘heroic’ efforts
at self-adjustment (Golledge, 1997). Those
of thesocial modelstress not the individual
but, rather, a wider society that fails
to accommodate impairment, thus embracing
a critical stance on the underlyingableism
of a non-disabled society (Chouinard, 1997).
The latter model, casting light on ‘disabling
social and environmental barriers’ (Barnes
and Mercer, 2004, p. 2; emphasis added)
and advocating a critical ‘politics of access’,
is inherently geographical in its alertness
to the social and physical placing of disabled
people within non-disabled settings. This
model also examines both the political–
economic forces impacting upon disability, as
in the discriminatory dynamics of labour
and housingmarkets, and the deeper roots
of oppression occasioned by the stigmatization
of ‘imperfect’ bodies (Hahn, 1989). It has
itself been criticized for remainingtoodis-
tanced from embodied realities, and thereby
neglecting subjective experience as revealed in
personal stories of pain, fatigue, rejection and
simply ‘getting by’. Some theorists hence call
for a third way, abiosocial model, allowingbod-
iesand experiences into the picture while still
retaining the critical sharpness of the social
model (Watson, 2004).
These debates have played out within geo-
graphical research on disability (Hall, 2000b),
which has become a recognizable sub-field
exemplified in review articles and edited book
collections (Park, Radford and Vickers, 1998;
Butler and Parr, 1999). Early work considered
the wheelchair-user or visually impaired per-
son negotiating the environmental obstacle
course of streets, curbs and buildings fronted
by steps (Golledge, 1993; Vujakovic and
Matthews, 1994). The focus upon ‘stairs’ was
then supplemented by a concern for ‘stares’
(Pain, Burke, Fuller and Gough, 2001,
p. 177), so that the issue becomes not just
physical accessibility but also the extent to
which disabled people are marked as different,
fundamentally unwanted and ‘out of place’ in
public space (Butler and Bowlby, 1997). The
broader context of ‘disabling environments’
here attracts critique, implicating architects,Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_D Final Proof page 164 1.4.2009 3:15pmDISABILITY