As technical communication (TC) instructors, it is vital that we continue reimagining our curricula as the field itself is continually reimagined in light of new technologies, genres, workplace practices, and theories—theories such as those from disability studies scholarship. Here, the authors offer an approach to including disability studies in TC curricula through the inclusion of a “critical accessibility case study” (CACS). In explicating the theoretical and practical foundations that support teaching a CACS in TC courses, the authors provide an overview of how TC scholars have productively engaged with disability studies and case studies to question both our curricular content and classroom practices. They offer as an example their “New York City Evacuation CACS,” developed for and taught in TC for Health Sciences courses, which demonstrates that critical disability theory can help us better teach distribution and design of technical information and user-based approaches to TC. The conceptual framework of the CACS functions as a strategy for TC instructors to integrate disability studies and attention to disability and accessibility into TC curricula, meeting both ethical calls to do so as well as practical pedagogical goals.

In this study, the authors examine patient use of and feelings about wearable technologies for health attainment and management. Based on an online survey of 81 patients using wearable technologies to track and manage health, as well as interviews with three patients utilizing wearables for health management, the authors examine how wearable technologies are being used by patients to attain health, manage health, and/or prevent health issues, and what value users find in these wearable technologies. The authors also examine how such use is impacting communication between medical professionals and patients. Specifically, the authors explore how the inclusion of wearable technologies has changed the “rhetorical relationship” between patients and medical professionals. The study concludes with a discussion of the future of wearable devices in patient-medical practitioner relationships and clinical settings.

At the time of this writing, the New York Times reports that more than 10,000 people have died from the coronavirus worldwide. Healthcare systems across the globe are struggling to keep up with the number of cases being confirmed each day. Over 50 studies on the virus were published in January 2020 as scientists worked to better understand it and potentially develop a vaccine (McFall-Johnsen, 2020) but there has not yet been a vaccine developed. While this is not the only global health crisis happening in early 2020, it is likely the one to which many readers have paid closest attention. We cannot know now the impact the spread of the coronavirus will have on the globe and yet individuals and organizations are currently working to transform uncertainty about the virus into evidence that governments and the public can use to make actionable decisions. While the book under review here does not deal with the coronavirus specifically, it does engage with issues of key importance related to the coronavirus: those of medical certainty and those of medical uncertainty.

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