Disability and Communication

In the hundred years of the history of communication studies in the United States, the relationship between communication and disability has received an increase in focused scholarly attention from researchers only in the last 20 years or so. This growing recent scholarly interest in disability and communication was marked by the creation of the National Communication Association’s (NCA) Disability Issues Caucus, which was developed and [Page 388]organized in the early 1990s based on the interest and work of key scholars, including Jim Ferris. The caucus has officially been part of the NCA since the mid-1990s. Since then, disability and communication has grown significantly as an area of scholarship, although it is still one of the smaller interest groups in the NCA.

Interestingly, in the very early days of the development of the field, speech correction was a recognized area of research and practice, as the field focused partly on helping people overcome speech-related problems to be better public speakers. Early research did not include disabilities per se, but rather speech problems such as articulation and voice quality. The much broader and legally grounded American with Disabilities Act conception of disability is a more recent scholarly interest area for communication scholars. Current conceptions of disability within communication studies do not typically focus on “correcting” problems or viewing disabilities as deficits but rather on understanding disability in part as a communication-centered phenomenon and on advocating for those who are disabled—including the members of the NCA. This entry examines disability issues in communication studies research, research paradigms that seek to address disability within the field, and how disability studies intersects with other areas of communication research.