Unheard Complaints: Integrating Captioning Into Business and Professional Communication Presentations

Abstract

This article explores pedagogical frameworks closely associated with d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing persons from the perspective of a disabled instructor to increase student awareness of the needs of diverse audiences they will encounter in the workforce. The author argues that students and instructors can use captioning theory to strategize one of the harder business communication genres, the presentation, for d/Deaf audiences to make communication more accessible. By raising critical awareness of the limits of technology, current trends in pedagogy, and disability, this article seeks to further the conversation about providing accessibility for disabled users in the classroom.

An Updated and Expanded Nationwide Study of Business Communication Courses

“…We developed our own items related to critical thinking in teams (see Items 30 and 31 in the supplementary appendix, available online). Finally, we developed an item about accessibility practices that emerged from several works about accessibility in Business and Professional Communication Quarterly articles (e.g., Clegg, 2018;Knight & Oswal, 2018;Meloncon, 2018;Nielsen, 2018; see Item 32 in the supplementary appendix, available online).…”

“…Instructors should also create channels for students to provide feedback about accessibility issues. Clegg (2018) showed how instructors and students can integrate captioning into presentations to develop more awareness about the needs of deaf and hard of hearing individuals.…”

Introduction to Special Issue on Accessibility

“…Recent academic research has focused on pedagogical approaches [2]- [4] and issues of design, most of it theoretically based [5], [6], which leaves much room for applied approaches. Moreover, research and initiatives in the workplace are also lagging behind.…”

Reimagining Business Planning, Accessibility, and Web Design Instruction: A Stacked Interdisciplinary Collaboration Across National Boundaries

“…Conflicting claims about accessibility versus usability have circulated in web development circles from the early days of the web. Even as the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and other vested bodies were developing accessibility guidelines a quarter century ago, the question remains unanswered whether their accessibility guidelines—which were represented by an industry-heavy group interested in a set of design criteria to meet the legal requirements—also encompassed the actual usability needs of users with disabilities (Chandrashekar & Benedyk, 2006). It is also not clear how much know-how about web accessibility issues existed at that time within the nonprofit organizations of disabled consumers—particularly the blind—who were inordinately affected by the disparities created by the predominantly visually oriented interface of the internet.…”

“…Others have argued for the inclusion of people with disabilities in both access and use of resources vis-a-vis nondisabled users. This type of inclusion could be supported by two interlinked sets of accessibility and usability guidelines that have natively built-in provisions for diverse user interfaces to meet the needs of a variety of users with or without disabilities (Chandrashekar & Benedyk, 2006; Power et al., 2012). Another school of accessibility thought favors universal usability that would provide disabled users native web accessibility vis-a-vis the nondisabled requiring no additional adaptive devices (Shneiderman, 1998; Vanderheiden, 2000).…”