Abstract

This study examined the disability support offices websites of twelve US higher education institutions anchored in multimodal discourse analysis and genre analysis to examine how semiotic resources are deployed to describe DSO services on their websites and to determine the discursive functions of advertisement they perform. The DSO websites were within four clicks from HEI homepages but had inconsistent navigation paths, making it difficult to reach DSO websites. DSO websites were foregrounding promoting and branding the institutions rather than presenting the information about the services offered. This is achieved by using multimodal promotional rhetoric such as: situating accessibility as central commodifiable attribute, promoting the value of accessibility, establishing the superiority of the institution, constructing images of students with disabilities as empowered but dependent upon the DSO, and situating students within a college community. Implications for DSO websites functioning as advertisements are also discussed.