Digital disability aesthetics: Queer-disabled practices in oral notfic

Abstract

Digital disability aesthetics recognize the structural importance of disability in digital creative production and evaluation practices. Transformative online fandom is especially well positioned to develop our understanding of these aesthetics and their critical potential. I theorize digital disability aesthetics through the case study of oral notfic, fan audio works recorded without preexisting textual content. A subgenre of the somewhat obscure sonic practice of podfic, oral notfic represents an especially understudied type of collaborative creative fan labor. Drawing on critical theories of disability access and aesthetics, I explore how these podficcers disrupt limited ideas of accessibility to enliven subjective access, honor space for crip creativity through valuing labor and community over finished products, and celebrate disability misfit aesthetics through practices such as the crack genre of fan works.