Deni Elliott

An in-depth account of training and working with a guide dog--and the radically honest story of a visually impaired woman facing her own internalized ableism For years, renowned ethics scholar Deni Elliott lived with her own moral dilemma: though severely visually impaired since birth, she spent decades attempting to "pass" as sighted, often finding ingenious but problematic workarounds in the process. Everything changed in her 40s when an ophthalmologist diagnosed her as legally blind and she could no longer hide her impairment. To maintain her independence, she would need to use a guide dog and openly present as disabled - a label she had rejected for decades. As Deni begins work with Graham Buck at Guiding Eyes for the Blind, she takes us into the fascinating world of guide dogs: their elite breeding, their training that starts at birth, their exceptional focus, their ability to act as decisionmakers when need be, and more. Enter Alberta, a two-year-old yellow Labrador retriever. As Deni and Alberta begin their work together, Deni realizes that having a guide dog--far from being a mark of shame and dependence--in fact means that she is joining a uniquely empowered community of canines, trainers, and owners. What began as a practical solution soon became something far deeper - a powerful relationship that challenged Deni's internalized ableism and reshaped her understanding of herself and the world. With warmth, insight, and surprising humor, Catching Sight tells the story of one woman's journey to embrace her full identity, and the guide dog who helped make it possible.

An in-depth account of training and working with a guide dog--and the radically honest story of a visually impaired woman facing her own internalized ableism For years, renowned ethics scholar Deni Elliott lived with her own moral dilemma: though severely visually impaired since birth, she spent decades attempting to "pass" as sighted, often finding ingenious but problematic workarounds in the process. Everything changed in her 40s when an ophthalmologist diagnosed her as legally blind and she could no longer hide her impairment. To maintain her independence, she would need to use a guide dog and openly present as disabled - a label she had rejected for decades. As Deni begins work with Graham Buck at Guiding Eyes for the Blind, she takes us into the fascinating world of guide dogs: their elite breeding, their training that starts at birth, their exceptional focus, their ability to act as decisionmakers when need be, and more. Enter Alberta, a two-year-old yellow Labrador retriever. As Deni and Alberta begin their work together, Deni realizes that having a guide dog--far from being a mark of shame and dependence--in fact means that she is joining a uniquely empowered community of canines, trainers, and owners. What began as a practical solution soon became something far deeper - a powerful relationship that challenged Deni's internalized ableism and reshaped her understanding of herself and the world. With warmth, insight, and surprising humor, Catching Sight tells the story of one woman's journey to embrace her full identity, and the guide dog who helped make it possible.

"Elliott and Spence have produced a tight, teachable, and timely primer on media ethics for users and creators of information in the digital age. Pitched at just the right depth of detail to provide a big picture contextualization of changing media practices grounded in concerns for democracy and the public good, the book explores and reflects the implications of the convergence of the Fourth and Fifth Estates with an open-access, hyper-linked architecture which invites self-reflective practice on the part of its users” Philip Gordon, Utah Valley University2019 PROSE Award Finalist in the Media & Cultural Studies category! The rapid and ongoing evolution of digital technologies has transformed the waythe world communicates and digests information. Fueled by a 24-hour news cycleand post-truth politics, media consumption and the technologies that drive ithave become more influential in shaping public opinion, and it has become more imperative than ever to examine their social and ethical consequences. Ethics for a Digital Era provides a penetrating analysis of the ethical issues that have emerged as the digital revolution progresses, including journalistic practices that impact on the truth, reliability, and trustworthiness of communicating information. The volume explores new methods and models for ethical inquiry in a digital world, and maps out guidelines for web-based news producers and users to conceptualize ethical issuesand analyze ethically questionable acts. In each of three thematic sections, Deni Elliott and Edward H. Spence reflect upon shifts in media ethics as contemporary mass communication combines traditional analog practices with new forms like blogs, vlogs, podcasts, and social media posts, and evolves into an interactive medium with users who both produce and consume the news. Later chapters apply a process of normative decision-making to some of the most important issues which arise in these interactions, and encourage users to bridge their own thinking between the virtual and physical worlds of information and its communication. Timely and thought-provoking, Ethics for a Digital Era is an invaluable resource for undergraduate and graduate students in media and mass communication, applied ethics, and journalism, as well as general readers interested in the ethical impact of their media consumption.

"Elliott and Spence have produced a tight, teachable, and timely primer on media ethics for users and creators of information in the digital age. Pitched at just the right depth of detail to provide a big picture contextualization of changing media practices grounded in concerns for democracy and the public good, the book explores and reflects the implications of the convergence of the Fourth and Fifth Estates with an open-access, hyper-linked architecture which invites self-reflective practice on the part of its users” Philip Gordon, Utah Valley University2019 PROSE Award Finalist in the Media & Cultural Studies category! The rapid and ongoing evolution of digital technologies has transformed the waythe world communicates and digests information. Fueled by a 24-hour news cycleand post-truth politics, media consumption and the technologies that drive ithave become more influential in shaping public opinion, and it has become more imperative than ever to examine their social and ethical consequences. Ethics for a Digital Era provides a penetrating analysis of the ethical issues that have emerged as the digital revolution progresses, including journalistic practices that impact on the truth, reliability, and trustworthiness of communicating information. The volume explores new methods and models for ethical inquiry in a digital world, and maps out guidelines for web-based news producers and users to conceptualize ethical issuesand analyze ethically questionable acts. In each of three thematic sections, Deni Elliott and Edward H. Spence reflect upon shifts in media ethics as contemporary mass communication combines traditional analog practices with new forms like blogs, vlogs, podcasts, and social media posts, and evolves into an interactive medium with users who both produce and consume the news. Later chapters apply a process of normative decision-making to some of the most important issues which arise in these interactions, and encourage users to bridge their own thinking between the virtual and physical worlds of information and its communication. Timely and thought-provoking, Ethics for a Digital Era is an invaluable resource for undergraduate and graduate students in media and mass communication, applied ethics, and journalism, as well as general readers interested in the ethical impact of their media consumption.

Ethics in the First Person is the first comprehensive guide to teaching and learning practical ethics to be published in more than 25 years. This book provides the historical context for the study of practical ethics in the Twenty-First Century, but focuses on the teaching and learning of practical ethics as a first-person, present-tense activity. Practical ethics instruction can be expected to bring about more sophisticated decision-making only if students and teachers keep cognizant of their own values, beliefs, and processes for thinking through ethical issues. Institutions of higher education and the ethics class itself provide often-ignored opportunities for ethical analysis. The book closes with an analysis of how ethics serves as a bridge across cultures. A resource for teachers of ethics across the curriculum, this book may also be used as a supplemental text for upper level undergraduate and graduate students, or as a guide for self-study.

Ethics in the First Person is the first comprehensive guide to teaching and learning practical ethics to be published in more than 25 years. This book provides the historical context for the study of practical ethics in the Twenty-First Century, but focuses on the teaching and learning of practical ethics as a first-person, present-tense activity. Practical ethics instruction can be expected to bring about more sophisticated decision-making only if students and teachers keep cognizant of their own values, beliefs, and processes for thinking through ethical issues. Institutions of higher education and the ethics class itself provide often-ignored opportunities for ethical analysis. The book closes with an analysis of how ethics serves as a bridge across cultures. A resource for teachers of ethics across the curriculum, this book may also be used as a supplemental text for upper level undergraduate and graduate students, or as a guide for self-study.

In The Kindness of Strangers, Deni Elliott examines ethically questionable situations that have arisen in response to institutional dependency on external benefactors. Major concerns analyzed include: The increased professionalism of fundraising and of donating, an increased willingness of institutions to cater to the demands of donors, creation of dual roles for faculty, students and staff when they are fundraisers and donors in addition to playing their primary roles in higher education, business-university research partnerships that put business values in conflict of academic values and mission, commercialization of student athletics, and endowment use and investment. Supplemented by a series of carefully selected articles, The Kindness of Strangers needs to be read by anyone who is concerned by higher education's increasing dependency on corporate and individual donors.