Accommodation Bureaucracy: Organizing Student Access

• In Event: Disability and Social Connections

Abstract

Although policies, such as Section 504 and the Americans with Disabilities Act, are in place to prohibit discrimination against people with disabilities, barriers to higher education persist. These barriers can range from the stigma associated with being disabled to insufficient institutional support for students with disabilities (Adams and Holland 2006; Bê 2019; Bolt et al. 2011; Brewer, Urwin, and Witham 2025; Gibson 2012; Healey et al. 2006; Macfarlane 2022; Marshak et al. 2010; Martin 2020; Price 2024). The number of disabled students matriculating at US higher education institutions continues to rise, placing additional pressure on the workload of accessibility/disability service offices (Field 2023). However, students with disabilities are not the only ones facing challenges or feeling silenced; accessibility/disability service providers also struggle to support these students within a system often limited by resources. In addition, there is no federally mandated blueprint for providing academic accommodations to these students; as a result, accessibility/disability service offices must decide for themselves, based on funding and institutional support, which services they can provide to students with disabilities (Behling et al. 2023). In recognizing the role of accessibility/disability service providers in supporting students, we can better understand how accessibility needs are organized and implemented across higher education institutions. By investigating various levels of the broader system that delivers academic accommodations, especially the relationships among students, faculty, accessibility/disability service providers, student academic/success advisors, and university administrators, enables us to recognize how bureaucratic structures in higher education influence both these interactions and a disabled student’s ability to gain access. This paper will examine the role of these service providers in not only supporting disabled students but also ensuring they have equal access to their higher education experience.

Author

• Jessica Leah Chaikof, The Heller School for Social Policy and Managment at Brandeis University