3 Research problem and report principles

Substantial existing research has documented problems with access in higher education. While disabled students make up an increasing percentage of higher education institution (HEI) student enrollment, their credential attainment and employment outcomes are lower than their peers (Chatoor 2021). It is estimated that between 10-30% of disabled students do not graduate, which is one measure of how access is failing in higher education (Chatoor, 2021). HEIs in Ontario are legally obligated to accommodate disabled students to ensure full participation and integration (Ontario Human Rights Commission 2019). However, the majority of disabled students do not receive academic accommodations. According to Dolmage (2021), 24% of first-year university students in Canada self-identify as having a disability, yet only 6-9% of students access supports from their institutions’ accessibility office (also referred to as Student Accessibility Services)^[1].

Accessibility offices rely on restrictive medico-legal understandings of disability which do not adequately accommodate students’ lived experiences and access needs (Shanouda, 2019; Dhanota, 2023; Dolmage, 2021). The existing system requires students to first self-identify as having a disability and demonstrate that disability medically before receiving accommodation. However, the terms on which students are required to disclose and narrate their experience are not equally available to all students, a problem raised repeatedly in our interviews. Increasingly described in the literature are the ways racialized, poor, and other multiply marginalized disabled students are required to leave out part of their experience when accessing disability supports to describe their experiences in ways legible to the system (Dhanota, 2023; Gorman, 2013; Fovert, 2020).

Students must also weigh the helpfulness of accommodations, the very real risk that they will face stigma from their professors and peers, and the labour required to meet institutional disclosure requirements (Grimes et al., 2019). This labour includes setting and attending medical appointments, completing assessments, and seeking, obtaining, and submitting the necessary documentation. Additionally, it involves repeated appointments and negotiations with university staff, including access advisors and instructors, to disclose and secure accommodations, often invisibilized under the shorthand term ‘self-advocacy’ (Karpicz, 2020). Even when accommodations are secured, access may still be partial and incomplete, especially access to student activities and experiences outside the classroom (Palmer et al., 2019; Dolmage, 2017).

It is necessary for administrators, instructors, and other individuals with decision-making power to think closely and intersectionally about the ways disclosure may continue to exacerbate how our campuses and programs are inaccessible to some students (Payne-Tsoupros, 2020). Yet, there is a “whitewashing” of disability supports in HEIs including departmental equity policies and commitments, which overwhelmingly fail to consider let alone center the lives and experiences of racialized students (Dhanota, 2023, p. 123; Stapleton & James, 2020). The dismissal of racialized student experiences in SAS policy and practice occurs in the context of Eurocentric processes which prioritize student disclosure and self-advocacy using a single-issue framework (i.e., there is little consideration of the different levels of access to disclosure and self-advocacy for racialized, poor, and other MMU students) (Fovert, 2020; Karpicz, 2020; Dhanota, 2023).

Access to academic accommodations is unevenly distributed among students: for some students, the pathway to accommodations may be smooth but for many it is fraught with pitfalls and uphill struggles that are structurally produced. There is an urgent need for equity-driven and explicitly anti-racist alternatives to the current system. This report aims to introduce examples of such alternatives to SAS staff and stakeholders at York University that can be used to inform real change. Throughout the report, we continue to discuss the problems introduced here (particularly in the pitfalls section). We strategically center race, class, and other historically marginalized identities to better understand who benefits from the status quo and to explore alternative pathways that resist this trajectory.

Report principles  

This report is guided by the principles of Disability Justice. Significantly, this report is informed by TL Lewis’ definition of “ableism” and the Disability Intersectionality Summit’s understanding of “access”: 

A system of assigning value to people’s bodies and minds based on societally constructed ideas of normalcy, productivity, desirability, intelligence, excellence, and fitness. These constructed ideas are deeply rooted in eugenics, anti-Blackness, misogyny, colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism. This systemic oppression that leads to people and society determining people’s value based on their culture, age, language, appearance, religion, birth or living place, “health/wellness”, and/or their ability to satisfactorily re/produce, “excel” and “behave.” You do not have to be disabled to experience ableism (working definition by TalilaLewis, developed in community with disabled Black/negatively racialized folks, 2022).

Lastly, we are informed by the broad definition of access used at the Disability Intersectionality Summit:

“Accessibility” is not only limited to ramps or captions or braille or scent-free spaces. Accessibility also goes beyond just disability, though we are highlighting disability accessibility here. There are many disabled people who are also queer, trans and nonbinary, indigenous, black, people of color, poor and working class, parents, immigrants and more.

We want to expand our understanding of what “access” means and think about how we can create spaces – and a world – where all kinds of accessibility are centered and valued.

(Disability Intersectionality Summit)