Dr. Philip Gallagher is working to make online communication more useful, usable and accessible for everyone, regardless of their sensory or physical abilities. Through his independent research as well as projects involving students, he is helping to improve user web experiences and educate the next generation of professionals who will continue these efforts. 

Dr. Gallagher, assistant professor of technical communication in the School of Engineering, came to Mercer in 2020 from the Midwest. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s degree in composition and rhetoric, both from Eastern Illinois University, and a Ph.D. in rhetoric and professional communication from Iowa State University. 

For about a decade, he has studied how users interact with written, oral and visual electronic communications, and he began to focus on making web experiences more accessible for people with different sensory issues a few years ago.