African Journal of Disability 2025 Special Collection: We invite you to submit

AOSIS calls on all authors to participate in the African Journal of Disability 2025 special collection that will be published in the open-access scholarly journal. Submit your latest research for consideration, contribute to the open-access content available to everyone, and share your expertise with a wider audience.

Timeline:

• Submissions open: 01 October 2024
• Submissions deadline: 31 March 2025
• Expected publication date: 31 August 2025

Value Co-Creation for Disability-Inclusive/Accessible Tourism amidst Climate Change

Global demographic characteristics, like ageing, gender identity, race, religion, ethnicity and (dis)ability, have led to ‘othering’, labelling and marginalisation in value and knowledge co-creation, teaching and learning space, and access to jobs, products and services for particular groups. Accessibility, universal design, and access are significant aspects of reasonable accommodation for everyone in the global tourism village. Despite the uneven pace at which accessibility and universal design are accepted, it is gaining momentum in the multifaceted tourism sector (UNWTO, 2023). International agreements and pledges like the United Nations Convention for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN, 2006), the Sustainable Development Goals (UN, 2015), and the Inner Development Goals (2021)-aimed to support SDGs through dimensions that add value with the related skillset and IPCC (2022) enshrine pathways and pointers towards leaving no one behind. Therefore, accessible tourism and climate change can contribute to reducing inequality (SDG 10), promoting decent work and economic growth (SDG 8), and promoting climate action (SDG 13). The IDGs have been specifically developed and designed to identify the key skills and competencies that need to be developed within communities, enabling them to successfully work towards achieving the UN’s SDGs by 2030.

Despite global commitments and the diverse nature of the tourism sector’s workforce and consumers, there continues to be a substantive disconnection between international policies and practices on accessible tourism, access to tourism, resilience to climate change in terms of job design, human capital development and management, inclusion in products and services design and offerings, promotion and marketing, and policies. Consequently, little is known about how accessible tourism is, how access to tourism is, and what the impact of climate change is on accessible tourism. In addition, research in this field is inconsistent across the tourism sectors in Africa. However, there is increasing globalisation, which results in diversity in the workforce and consumer groups and the changing economic landscape in many developed and developing countries (Parrotta et al., 2014).

The existence of scant African-based literature does not necessarily mean organisations are not moving towards transformation-inclusive approaches. However, research might have yet to uncover it, and the tourism industry might be struggling to find ways to record statistics, policy, and practice informed by non-tourism context-inclusive advocacy. Nonetheless, the absence of statistics exacerbates the tourism sector’s grappling with interpreting disability inclusion, accessibility, and access to tourism beyond separate policies. In most cases, most of the private tourism sector conforms to legislative frameworks, using non-sustainable means like learnerships that hardly incorporate those with (dis)ability into mainstream employment and systems. The public sector prefers the quota system, which in most cases has subjective documentation and impact because marginalised population groups have a background of not being afforded employment-related empowerment.

Therefore, tourism organisations are now urged to overcome discrimination and consciously adopt diversity, equity and inclusion practices through their employment and people management practices, product and services design and delivery, promotion and marketing and organisational policies. The basis for the stance is transformation to address injustice and prejudiced views against specific population groups for decades. These groups include women, youth, people of colour, Indigenous groups, and persons with disabilities (mental, visual, hearing, physical and multiple). The argument stretches to work performance, which is influenced by various macro, micro and meso factors, which can be altered to improve the performance of complex tasks (Dixon-Fyle et al., 2020), spur employee productivity, efficiency, and well-being (Findler et al., 2008) and innovation (Lee, 2015). With rapid technological advancements, the potential role of digital technology and innovation in shaping and facilitating accessible tourism, access to tourism, and mitigation and resilience regarding the impact of climate change on businesses and destinations is yet to be explored.

It is unknown how many tourism organisations have adopted accessible tourism approaches (Universal Design) (Liu, 2023), especially in Africa. The limited extant Disability-Inclusive/Accessible Tourism and Climate Change-related research has mainly focused on investigating the nature of gender, diversity, equity, and inclusion across levels and grades within organisations (intersectionality), with other dimensions of diversity such as age, ethnicity and race and (dis)ability being largely overlooked (Benjamin & Dillette, 2021; 2022; Benjamin et al., 2024) in terms of the workforce but instead researched from a consumer perspective (Kim & Lee, 2023; Kimbu et al, 2021). If such affects Europe, Australia, the Americas, and Asia, Africa is no exception, despite tourism being a labour-intensive industry with an unskilled and semi-skilled workforce.

Consequently, while there are some examples of good industry practices within the sector, more academic literature needs to theorise and unpack this topic within tourism due to several societal, cultural sectorial and industry-related setbacks that nurture inequality and inequity. An overarching barrier or challenge is the variation across the tourism sector regarding how to define the terms and address Accessibility, either positive or negative, as an existing issue for a solution-driven approach that needs to be tested and published. Furthermore, even though extant literature is now attempting to highlight some of the challenges faced by disadvantaged groups, mainly within the hospitality industry (Yang et al., 2023), and has unpacked and comprehensively analysed the relationship between workforce diversity and performance in the hospitality and tourism context and across national regions (Sourouklis & Tsagdis, 2013), literature estimating the potential accessibility dividend of the sector and its contribution to the broader economy and some of the SDGs at the meso, macro and micro levels is scant.

The nature of tourism creates a conducive environment for an interplay between individual organisations and sectors, and the special collection would welcome research at organisational and destination levels. It also aims to open up opportunities for reassessing socio-economic sustainability in tourism from an African lens. Furthermore, this special collection aims to influence policy and drive organisational and social change by creating a body of knowledge, networks and pathways for achieving Disability-inclusive/Accessible Tourism that upholds resilience to the impact of climate change for systematic inclusive development.

In keeping with the aims and scope of the African Journal of Disability with this call, we seek, among other things, a critical (re)examination of Disability-Inclusive/Accessible Tourism-related policies and practices within tourism from a socio-economic sustainability perspective. Particular attention is set on the African tourism ecosystem of services (value chain) research that explores one or more economic, social, cultural, political, and organisational dimensions of Disability-inclusive/Accessible tourism and climate change from national, cross-national-African contexts. This region is missing as a tourism block, with scant knowledge of the epistemology and ontology of accessible tourism and climate change being part of the debate.

Objective:

1. To scientifically document Afrocentric disability-inclusive/accessible tourism and climate change as informed by the tourism, hospitality sector (industries included), education and training (skills development), events, transportation, and entertainment.
2. To open up opportunities for reassessing Africa’s socio-economic influence policy and drive organisational and social change by creating a body of knowledge, networks and pathways for achieving Disability-inclusive/Accessible Tourism that upholds resilience to the impact of climate change for systematic inclusive development.
3. To critically (re)examine Disability-Inclusive/Accessible Tourism in the African tourism ecosystem of services (value chain) research on cultural, political, and organisational dimensions and climate change from national, cross-national-African contexts.
4. To foster a conducive environment for a baseline knowledge development that uncovers the epistemology and ontology of disability-inclusive/accessible tourism and climate change in South, North, East, West and Central African tourism blocks.

Recommended topics:

Disability Inclusive/Accessible tourism and climate change is inclusive of (but not limited to) the following topics:

• Education and training
• Organisational policies and strategies
• Products and services design and delivery processes and frameworks
• Promotion and marketing
• People and diversity management in tourism organisations
• Governance (macro, meso and micro levels)
• Research, education and financial support
• Consumer behaviour
• Labour supply and demand and employment in the digital transformation era
• Intersectionality and sustainable development
• Entrepreneurship and investment
• Race and ethnicity
• Models that inform Accessible tourism and climate change
• Public policies and cross-sector collaborations for accessible tourism
• Accessibility and inclusion of host communities (including rural and townships) in development
• New methodologies and methods for research
• Theoretical perspectives and models for research
• The role of NGOs and civil society
• Symbiotic linkages with SDGs
• The use of IDGs in relation to achieving SDGs
• Tourism policy instruments for socio-economic sustainability

Manuscript information:

The author guidelines include information about the types of articles received for publication and preparing a manuscript for submission. Read the full submissions guidelines.

Submission procedure:

When submitting your article to the African Journal of Disability, choose ‘Special Collection: Value Co-Creation for Disability-Inclusive/Accessible Tourism amidst Climate Change’ as the article type. You can access the submission portal on the journal’s website after logging in with your personal credentials. For further information on the submission process, visit the journal procedure page.

All submissions will undergo an anonymous review process to guarantee high scientific quality and relevance to the subject. The Editor-in-Chief will make the final decision on acceptance, revision, or rejection based on the feedback from the reviewers.

We will be happy to provide you with any assistance during the submission and application process. Kindly enquire at submissions@ajod.org.

All submissions and inquiries should be directed to the attention of the Guest Editors below:

• Dr Tawanda Makuyana (North-West University) – makuyanatawanda@gmail.com
• Dr Willy Engelbrecht (Da Vinci Business School) – willy.engelbrecht@gmail.com
• Ms Regina Makoni (North-West University) – reginamakoni@gmail.com
• Ms Daphney Makhubela (Cathsseta) – daphneymakhubela10@gmail.com
• Mr Tshenolo Montsiemang (Vaal University Technology) – mont1709@gmail.com
• Mr Jonas Ndlovu (DRC Consultancy & Advisory) – jonas.ndlovu@tuks.co.za

We would be honoured to receive a positive reply from you and look forward to receiving your article.