Blogs

SPECIAL ISSUE OF BPCQ: Call for Abstracts

Enabling Workplaces, Classrooms, and Pedagogies: Bringing Disability Theory and Accessibility to Business and Professional Communication

Deadline for submission: April 1, 2016

Overview

Since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, most communication-related fields have produced scholarship and practice which address disability and accessibility. However, hardly any research on disability and accessibility has been published in the fields of Business and Professional Communication. This special issue aims at breaking the ground in this erstwhile neglected area because disability and accessibility are of legal, human, and economic concern to business, industry, government, and professional organizations the world over.

This special issue will include theoretical as well as applied practice articles in the context of disability and accessibility. Since BPCQ presents research on Business and Professional Communication as it relates to teaching, the theoretical and field research articles included in the special issue will include a section on the implications of the research for Business and Professional Communication pedagogy. Pedagogically centered manuscripts are also welcome as long as they are grounded in disability, accessibility, and other BPC theory pertinent to the focus of this special issue. Suggested topics for the special issue include but are not limited to the following:

Disability Theory and Workplace Practice:

-Disability at the Intersections of Social Media and Business/Professional Communication Accessibility, business and professional communication, and the equitable workplace Business and professional communication, policy, law, and disability

-Studies of corporate websites and disabled access

-Studies of projects aimed at enhancing the accessibility of Business/Professional Communication

-Studies of the representations of disability and/or accessibility in mass media by business and industry, governments, and nongovernmental organizations

-Focused studies of document features—language, page layout, visual design, etc.—that promote accessibility or exclude certain audiences

-Affordances and excesses of Universal Design Theory

Business/Professional Communication Pedagogy, Disability, and Accessibility:

-Ableism in business and professional communication courses
-Designing an accessible business and/or professional communication course: How can instructors help our students be aware of and prepared for writing for accessibility?

-Issues in teaching the anatomy of communicative access in a business and/or professional course

-Critical appraisals of disability-centered business and/or professional communication course assignments designed under the social justice rubric

-Designing accessible business communication classrooms and learning spaces
-Rhetoric of accessibility in business and industry: implications for instructors and curricula

-Accessibility of workplace communications and disabled employees: What can business and professional communication instructors do?

Nuanced Papers that Explore the Nature of Business and Professional Communication Practice from the Perspective of Disability and Accessibility:
-How accessible are our business PowerPoint presentations?

-How professional are inaccessible workplace communications?
-How do organizations publically and privately articulate their responsibility in matters of disability and accessibility
-What do organizational disability narratives look like and what purposes do they serve in the post-ADA organization?
-How do the various models of disability—medical, social, critical social, etc.—play out in business, governmental, and nongovernmental organizations?
-What do workplace communications tell us about how people with disabilities perceive themselves in relation to business and professional organizations and how do these perceptions translate into their access to information in these workplaces?
-How do people with disabilities perceive, communicate about, and employ digital and other technologies in the workplace in relation to self and perceived barriers or enablers?
-In what ways do government policies, online information providers, and information technology corporations affect the workplace disability divide?
-What role should policies aimed at disability-justice play in legitimatizing the 21st-century business organization and what role should business and professional communication have in this policy dialog?
-What effect does the absence, or presence, of disability in the workplace have on ableistic business and professional communication practices?

Guest Editor and Submission Information.

The special issue is being edited by Associate Professor Sushil Oswal, School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, University of Washington. The editor is glad to discuss initial topic ideas for papers and can be contacted directly.
Manuscripts will be double-blind reviewed, following BPCQ’s regular review process. Submission is open to everyone whether or not a member of the Association for Business Communication. Abstracts of 750 to 1,000 words (notes and references excluded) that include research questions, methods, data and/or theoretical frameworks, and conclusions should be emailed to Sushil Oswal no later than April 1, 2016.
Contributors will be informed of decisions by May 1, 2016. Deadline for submission of full manuscripts is August 1, 2016.