Connecting Intersectionality to Accessibility

• In Event: Conceptualizing the New Accessibility in Higher Education: Leveraging Disruption for Transformative Opportunity

Abstract

The politics of accessibility strive to demonstrate that disabled people are and should be fully present in every facet of contemporary public life. Design-driven accessibility must therefore be incorporated into every facet of modern organizations and every response to new challenges. Sadly, however, that has proven to be the case all too rarely: COVID-19 killed or resulted in long-term health consequences for disabled people at a much higher rate than for non-disabled peers. Climate change has disproportionately harmed disabled people globally, and in affluent nations, accessibility considerations have often receded into the background. Contemporary technologies like generative AI and enhanced reality simulations have been rushed to market with far too little consideration of accessibility. The list goes on because ableism goes on, and the need for proactive efforts to ensure accessibility arises from ableism, which leads to the societal normalization of the devaluation of disabled lives and the active prioritization of the needs of non-disabled persons. As a system of oppression linked to disability status, ableism offers unearned privileges to those considered able-bodied and/or able-minded that it denies to disabled people. Ableism is embedded in interpersonal interactions, societal institutions, legal systems, and cultural norms. Ableism is particularly salient in relation to higher education; as Dolmage (2017) noted, “Disability has always been constructed as the inverse or opposite of higher education.” (p. 3). In higher education, ableism structures inaccessibility throughout colleges and universities manifesting in the exclusion or limited inclusion of disabled students and employees in physical spaces, curriculum and the co-curriculum, and even diversity discourses.
Due to the myriad ways that it is intertwined with the very nature of disability, an understanding of ableism is essential for those who seek to create higher education institutions that center disability justice, and in order to fully understand ableism, an intersectional lens is needed. This symposium discussion will review literature related to disability, ableism, critical social theories, and the experiences of disabled college students and makes the case that intersectionality is a foundational concept for those committed to ensuring the accessibility of higher education institutions. Beginning with a discussion of intersectionality’s theoretical origins and current uses, the panel will provide a discussion of how intersectionality has been, and might be, used to understand the experiences of disabled persons. The panel then provides an in-depth discussion of empirical findings related to disability, ableism, and the systems of oppression that have been historically associated with intersectionality– namely: race-, class-, and gender-based systems of oppression. Reflecting the long-running attention to the regulation of sexualities as a function of race-, class, and gender-based systems of oppression, we also examine systems of oppression linked to sexuality. This panel will conclude with a discussion of implications for the utilization of intersectional approaches in the pursuit of accessibility on college and university campuses.

Authors

• Ryan A. Miller, University of Tennessee

• Rachel E. Friedensen, St. Cloud State University

• Annemarie Vaccaro, University of Rhode Island

• Ezekiel Kimball, University of Maine