Strategies for supporting the online publishing activities of adults with learning difficulties

Abstract

This paper reports on a study that explored the online publishing activities of adults with learning difficulties, the strategies that carers and professionals have used to support these activities and the implications these strategies may have for empowerment and self‐advocacy. Content analysis of 15 home pages revealed that despite having a certain degree of information and communication technology literacy, many of the authors were being supported in their online publishing activities. For, the majority, their family provided this support. The supportive strategies that were used involved including the home page as part of a bigger family web site and taking sole or joint responsibility for writing the narrative of the home page. These strategies raise interesting questions about the validity of online publishing activities as vehicles for self‐advocacy and the power relationships that such activities expose.