20 Conclusion

This report examines pitfalls in academic accommodation processes, identifies emerging access-oriented practices, and amplifies the aspirations of students, faculty, and staff in US and Canadian HEIs. The pitfalls revealed how students’ access needs remain at the mercy of a restrictive medical model, a poorly resourced accessibility office, and are often precariously negotiated at the behest of faculty. While these pitfalls compromise the educational experiences of students with diverse and multiple access needs, they are structurally produced because of the asymmetrical relationship between the policies of the university and its practices.

Considering the aforementioned pitfalls, students, faculty, and service administrators recognised the collective need for an institutional response, that is, informed and guided by the principles of disability justice. By articulating their aspirations for a more accessible learning environment through the prism of disability justice, groups echoed the need for robust institutional support to better service the diverse access needs of their members. Nonetheless, to better understand the access-oriented practices that are responsive to the accommodation needs of students, an examination of various institutional practices was undertaken across multiple tertiary institutions in Canada and the US.

In doing so, it was revealed that in order to dismantle the interlocking web of oppression (ableism, sanism, and racism) from further compromising the educational experiences of students with access needs, HEIs should take concrete actions to design and implement alternative pathways to access for/with students that are more just and equitable. Hence, HEIs as participants urged, should remove the medical documentation model from the access equation and adopt instead a series of transformational praxis since access is a collective responsibility.   We end this report outlining calls to action we argue require immediate attention.