The K-12 sector has sought to develop inclusive provisions for over two decades, but post-secondary education has not shifted as rapidly towards the inclusion of students with disabilities. Inclusion still mostly amounts to retrofitting and the provision of accommodations. This leads to a degree of stigmatization, and rarely leads to a genuine metamorphosis of the higher education classroom, or the transformation of pedagogy. The result is a tangible tension between the expectations of students with disabilities and institutional culture. The chapter examines the power of the current discourse of students with disabilities and their thirst for change. It then seeks to explore how this discourse can be translated into action, and more particularly how the social model of disability can be integrated into higher education. Universal design for learning appears as a promising framework to translate this activism into tangible change. The chapter develops this reflection beyond pedagogy itself and considers how a framework such as UDL can support a radical transformation of leadership.
‘The ultimate goal is to create a more inclusive environment, a culture in which revealing a health problem, admitting having difficulties and seeking support is not associated with stigmatisation, discrimination, distress, or social isolation.’ (Zaussinger & Terzieva, 2018)
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The Black Lives Matter movement has recently, in 2020, led to a powerful emergence of reflection around the marginalization of racialized individuals in society, inequitable power dynamics in all dimensions of employment, law enforcement, and social space; it more particularly has triggered a dynamic rethink of the ways the needs of Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPOC) are being addressed in higher education (Hailu & Sarubbi, 2019). Earlier on in 2019, the #metoo movement has similarly created a deep and radical awakening around gender discrimination, sexual harassment and inequities perpetrated against women in all dimensions of society. Academia, in this case too, has been shaken into taking rapid action to address the many ways inequities against women have been perpetuated in post-secondary education (Flaherty, 2020). In this sense, the last two years have been an unprecedented era of change and transformation for the sector.
While this vibrant – and slightly feverish – momentum has affected both academia and society as a whole, and has been extensively documented by the media, the search for wider social justice and dynamic transformative action in post-secondary education goes deeper than just the BLM and the #metoo phenomena; it has also been long coming. The decolonizing the curriculum movement, for example, has been less mediatized but just as powerfully disruptive for the post-secondary sector (Charles, 2019). A parallel, if less noticed, drive for change has begun with, at its roots, students with disabilities (Lopez-Gavira, Moriña & Morgado, 2019). While the K-12 sector has indeed been moving towards inclusive provisions for over two decades in most Global North jurisdictions, post-secondary education has not to date moved equally rapidly to include students with disabilities in a seamless fashion.
In most campuses in Global North jurisdiction, inclusion means retrofitting, and access to learning through a structure of support services that fail to transform pedagogy in the classroom itself (Smith, Woodhead & Chin-Newman, 2019). Students who cannot have access to learning in the classroom are expected to request support outside the classroom, and these individualized interventions are provided by accessibility services (Toutain, 2019). The accommodations require the learner to disclose a diagnosis, face possible stigmatization, and accept that the learning experience itself remains designed in a non-accessible way despite the challenges they are facing in the classroom (Vickerman & Blundell, 2010). Students who have received genuinely inclusive provisions in the K-12 sector are accessing higher education in increasing number but face pedagogical approaches that are not evolving and continue to exclude them (Rose & Shevlin, 2017). This creates a very tangible tension between students with disabilities and institutional culture (Pazey, 2021). The voice of these students is increasingly loud and pushing for change (Stevens, 2020).