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I attempted to reach the corresponding author, for an article I had questions about, but her university e-mail was seemingly disabled because she left academia.
Learning that she started to work at a corporate job, I looked for alternative sources of communication such as business e-mail, which I failed to find as well.
In this scenario, is it acceptable to contact the secondary author since I really have no way contacting the author listed as corresponding author?
Yes, you can do that. I see no problem. You might explain that you also tried to reach the corresponding author unsuccessfully.
It is unlikely that the volume of such email will be a burden. And, they might just give you contact information for their colleague the corresponding author.
All authors are responsible for the contents of the paper. So the corresponding author is only listed to facilitate orderly and consistent responses to any queries. But each of the authors needs to respond to good-faith queries.
