All students in order to succeed in college. But when a student has a disability, inclusion can be more difficult to achieve. One study shows that students with disabilities ,?such as clubs or on-campus events, than their non-disabled peers.?
This is due to a , the study states. It also stems from the fact that many colleges and university programmes .
College students with disabilities are also than their peers without disabilities. Research shows that of college students with disabilities complete a four-year programme. Conversely, 51 per cent of their peers without disabilities finish school. This begs the question: how can colleges and universities become more inclusive?
Start early
First, teachers at the K-12 level need to develop skills to talk about disabilities. While educators might teach about topics?such as race, class, gender or sexuality, disability is .
Ask yourself: how many books did you read in school that featured characters with disabilities? How much did you learn about the in your social studies classes?
Disability-based need to be more in school. By the time students enter college, they might hesitate to discuss disability because they are worried about saying the wrong thing. can continue long after college.
Think about language
When people do talk about disability, they may default to “” that casts people with disabilities as either inspirational or pitiable.
Ben Myers, an advocate for people with disabilities, the problem with disability rhetoric. When you say that a person can do something “despite” his or her disability, it sets up disability as something that strong people overcome and weaker ones live with.?
While rhetoric might seem harmless, this kind of speech furthers the idea that people with disabilities are .
Inspiration-based language is too. Colleges and universities should examine how disabilities are portrayed in their campus literature. They should also consider using language that reflects the . Rather than glorify or pity a person with a disability, talk about them like?you would anyone else. Recognise the person and don’t focus on the disability.
Provide opportunities for inclusion
On-campus disability groups can , and create opportunities for all students to engage in social activities.
At Villanova where I teach, ?– a student-run disability awareness group – provides opportunities for students to raise awareness and participate in fully accessible social activities on and off campus. Similarly, (DREAM)?is a national organisation in the US that advocates for campus disability groups and individual students.?
Make disability a part of diversity
Although many colleges and universities have , disability still gets short shrift. For instance, in a of the California State University system, researchers found that 66 per cent of websites had on their homepages. The?website homepage is the of the university. The ?of the study argue that visible representations of disability are important to make students with disabilities feel “welcome on campus in the same way that images of racial or gender diversity are used to attract diverse applicants”.
In , Rosemarie Garland Thomson, a disability justice leader and professor at Emory University, said that most people don’t consider people with disabilities as having a shared social identity or a political status. Given how the disability community has struggled to earn basic civil rights, including , ?and , it is important to think about disability in terms of diversity.
How disability can be visible and invisible
Recently, there has been a movement to map the accessibility of colleges and universities. At the University of Pennsylvania, a graduate student and his colleagues developed the . This project is an effort to digitally map the “emergence of physical and social barriers” around campus. The project shows that a lack of physical access, such as having stairs instead of a ramp, also erects a social barrier, as people with disabilities can’t participate in that space.
And it’s important to remember that disability isn’t only physical. Many college students with invisible disabilities,?such as learning?difficulties or autism, still in their university classrooms.
While there is no simple solution to address the exclusion of students with disabilities in higher education, colleges, universities and K-12 schools need to do more to provide resources, education and experiences that include students with disabilities in the conversation.
This blog on The Conversation.
Christa Bialka is assistant professor of Special Education at Villanova University.