Missive from the Accommodations Loop

Missive from the Accommodations Loop

Daniel P. Jones
Research Associate in Critical Disability Studies
University of Sheffield

 

Élaina Gauthier-Mamaril
Research Associate in Critical Disability Studies
University of Sheffield
Introduction

The disability accommodations loop is a hellscape, this much we can agree on. For disabled academics such as ourselves, it is an intensely isolating and infuriating Moebius strip to be stranded on, especially since most of our self-advocacy work is invisible to the non-disabled (Price 2024). For example, the University of Virginia grants accommodations per class, so the “21k applications for 25k students” that Levinovitz cites probably includes multiple requests for accommodations from a smaller number of students. Anyone who has ever been involved in the mountain of paperwork, emails, doctor’s visits, and the often humiliating appeals to professors and HR officers that are necessary to allow us to study and work would not casually float out the “But what if they are faking it?” thought experiment. Mostly because we are too tired from being disabled.

We are writing this response from the UK because we believe in the importance of disabled access. We agree that university accommodations, as part of an individualised approach to the structural problem of ableism in academia, are worthy of critique. And we agree with Von Bergen that meeting the legal requirements of access is only the beginning. However, Levinovitz’s arguments contribute to a broader societal moral panic about challenges to societal norms that is dangerous for disabled people and other marginalised folks. Framing a rise in the rate of student requests to participate in educational spaces as ‘potentially problematic’ is not harmless. It feeds directly into the mainstream narrative that positions disabled people as ineffective citizens, as scroungers who are morally untrustworthy but who deserve our pity. There are many ways in which the accommodations process is damaging to disabled people; we do not need to posit imaginary scenarios. So, for those who are curious to read a critical disability studies take from disabled scholars who work on anti-ableism in the university context, here is our modest proposal.

Legitimate critiques of accommodations from disability studies

Disabled people, disability scholars, and disability advocates have raised many concerns with the accommodations framework over the years. We cannot address them all here, so we have chosen two themes in response to Levinovitz’s claims that a) the rise in accommodation requests is detrimental to university workers and b) that the lack of “evidence-based approaches” undermines the need for an accommodation system. We hope to bring some much needed nuance to this conversation.

Critique 1: Accommodations are an individualistic band-aid

“Accommodationist strategies single out disabled people as exceptional “misfits” in need of accommodation while keeping the structures that produce disability exclusion intact (Garland-Thomson 2011).” (Hamraie 2016)

There is a reason why accommodations are often despised as “special treatment”: that is what they are set up to be. Asking to be accommodated means asking for a case-by-case tweak of the existing structure; therefore it is no wonder that an influx of such requests fosters resentment. Instead, disability justice activists call for meaningful access that is committed to long-term reform and care (Mingus 2010). The university is built on ableist assumptions about who belongs as a scholar, who can learn, and whose knowledge should be shared (Dolmage 2017). So, of course chipping at the structure one accommodation (or 21k) at a time is not addressing the root of the problem. What we need is to revolutionize the whole university by changing the recruitment, research methods, teaching and collaboration structures and policies. Higher education needs to be better funded, particularly when it comes to projects like the Wellcome Anti-ableism Research Culture (WAARC) at the University of Sheffield. In the meantime, it is our moral responsibility to provide access to as many students and staff as possible.

It is accurate to say that Disability Services Officers are overwhelmed and overworked. In the UK, staff in higher education work on average more than two unpaid days a week (UCU 2021). This is the status quo for university workers in the neoliberal university. Crushing workloads are a symptom of predatory capitalistic logic, not of an illegitimate influx of access requests. Levinovitz is not alone in framing disabled people as the problem for daring to ask for support: accusing disabled people of being ‘ineffective uses of time and resources’ is a familiar eugenic refrain. We have seen it quite recently with how quickly disabled people became expendable during COVID-19 medical triages (Stramondo 2021). Non-disabled people may have forgotten, but we never will. As long as disabled students and staff are seen as a burden on their colleagues and as a drain on resources, we will keep perpetuating ableist norms that have tragic consequences. We need, as a higher education community and as a society, to pivot from accommodations to meaningful access (Mingus 2010). Students who request access are not the problem, they are the ones who are holding us accountable and demanding necessary change.

Critique 2: Accommodations as an endpoint serve an assimilationist agenda

“Too often, accessibility standards and expectations presume disabled peoples’ needs. Compliance-based checklists often fail to consider access as a qualitative experience or framework.” (Hamraie 2016)

It may be true that some accommodations are arbitrary, like time extensions on exams and coursework; there is probably not enough data on how to support students with fluctuating chronic conditions. But the answer to this is not to pause all disability support until we achieve the holy grail of empiricism: just ask disabled people what they need and believe them when they answer. Levinovitz claims that accommodations do not prepare students for the real world; but the real world includes people like us who are disabled and employed. Of course, this is a problem when requesting access is framed as inconvenient and disruptive. But it is supposed to be disruptive! Having disabled people in public spaces and institutions should change the way we operate because we bring with us a wealth of diverse experiences, ideas, and needs. Our existence is not an inconvenience; you are flustered because our presence among you is a reminder that there is no one way to be a scholar, a colleague, or a community member. We do not want access because we want to uphold the status quo, but because we are human beings in a society. Meaningful access should be transformative, which is exactly what Levinovitz is afraid of. Do not be fooled by the tears-shed over misallocated university resources: his essay cautions us to treat agitators (i.e. disabled students) with extreme suspicion.

Being led by the most affected

Meaningful access in particular and disability justice in general can only be achieved if we are being led by the most affected. In the case of university accommodations, that would be those who request access support, i.e. disabled and neurodiverse students and staff members. The stakes of being granted or being denied access are the highest for us. We are the ones who suffer from the moral panic discourse around our presumed entitlement and deception. We can critique the corporate neoliberal structures that make access more difficult, but we must not forget that disabled people will still need and deserve access whether you think of us as a burden or not.

When it comes to disability discourse, it is vital that we centre the experiences of disabled folks themselves. The key concern in Levinovitz’s paper, as aforementioned, is one of moral panic. Despite the essay’s claims, continuing to offer access accommodations will not mean that “rates of disorders will continue to rise”. Levinovitz’s concern with the number of access requests is more akin to  a moral panic to do with neurodiversity and disability, rather than a concern about access accommodations. If Levinovitz is concerned with increasing rates of diagnosis, this is irrelevant to the idea of rising rates of disorders.

Perhaps a more explicitly ableist assumption made in Levinovitz’s paper concerns students who request (and receive) accommodations showing “no evidence of impairment”. An assumption is being made that disabled and neurodivergent folks are somehow inherently lesser, and that only disabled folks who perform so-called struggle in particular ways deserve access to higher education. Further to this, the essay seems to pit disabled folks against each other, pushing for a hierarchy of disability. In particular, Levinovitz questions the willingness of students to get back to how things were following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, without acknowledgement that we are still very much in the midst of a mass disabling event. The hand-wringing “Give them an inch, they’ll take a mile!” bluster is indicative of a tenured professor who is unwilling to consider that demands for more access might be demands for more justice. The real story of disability accommodations in higher education is not one of abusing the system, it is about learners and teachers reaching out to what is available to them. Critiquing the system should not come at the expense of disabled people trying to exist.

Interestingly, us disabled folks find ourselves once more in the place of doing the work. Ahmed (Ahmed, 2016) has explored how disabled folks are the ones most likely to end up doing disability advocacy and activism work, and this all contributes to the additional labour that we - and other disabled folks - who are based within academia and higher education are required to engage in. To paraphrase disabled activist-historian Hannah Sullivan-Facknitz, we have to put in so much work to educate people about access, we don’t have a choice but to become activists if we want to start doing our job (Gauthier-Mamaril 2023). Moral panic-based arguments such as those posed in Levinovitz’s paper are dangerous, and only contribute to the inaccessibility of academia for disabled and neurodivergent people. Being led by the most affected in disability discourse can minimise the risk associated with ableist takes such as those proposed by Levinovitz, and assure that discourse surrounding disability has the nuance it requires.

Conclusion

Ultimately, we need to ensure that we are being led by, and centring, the most affected people when it comes to criticising disability accommodations. Again, no one is disputing the fact that the accommodation loop is truly a hellscape. However, if we centre disabled people in this instance, we can move beyond moral panic and mass hysteria over the fear of universities changing too much, and acknowledge that continuing to regularly adjust teaching and assessment practices is actually best practice. The university as an institution, in a majority of contexts, is an institution dedicated to civic engagement. Civic engagement - addressing concerns and issues in the wider community context - is considered a positive thing across the sector (Salisu, Douglas-Oloyede & Jones, 2024; Goodley, 2024). The university should be evolving and changing in line with the public interest. If there are more disabled people in the local community, the university should be evolving and rethinking their practice to boost accessibility. Removing access accommodations is not the way to respond to this.

References

Ahmed, Sara. 2016. ‘Brick Walls’, in Living a Feminist Life, pp 135-160.

Dolmage, Jay. 2017. Academic Ableism: Disability and Higher Education. Corporealities. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Gauthier-Mamaril, Élaina. 2023 ‘Ethics of Kinship in the Archive w/Hannah Sullivan-Facknitz’. Philosophy Casting Call Season 3. Accessed 3 October 2023. https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/philoccpod/episodes/Ethics-of-Kinship-in-the-Archive-wHannah-Sullivan-Facknitz-e1t2e04/a-a94m2ep.

Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. 2011. ‘Misfits: A Feminist Materialist Disability Concept’. Hypatia 26 (3): 591–609. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1527-2001.2011.01206.x.

Goodley, D. (2024). Depathologising the university. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 1-18.

Hamraie, Aimi. 2016. ‘Beyond Accommodation: Disability, Feminist Philosophy, and the Design of Everyday Academic Life’. philoSOPHIA 6 (2): 259–71. https://doi.org/10.1353/phi.2016.0022.

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Mingus, Mia. 2010. ‘Reflections On An Opening: Disability Justice and Creating Collective Access in Detroit’. Leaving Evidence (blog). 23 August 2010. https://leavingevidence.wordpress.com/2010/08/23/reflections-on-an-opening-disability-justice-and-creating-collective-access-in-detroit/.

Price, Margaret. 2024. Crip Spacetime: Access, Failure, and Accountability in Academic Life. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Salisu, Robiu., Douglas-Oloyede, Freya., and Jones, Daniel P. 2024. ‘Open doors, narrow corridors? A rapid literature review of practices beyond institutional structures that support students from underrepresented backgrounds, AdvanceHE.

Stramondo, Joseph A. and Philosophy Documentation Center. 2021. ‘Tragic Choices: Disability, Triage, and Equity Amidst a Global Pandemic’. The Journal of Philosophy of Disability 1:201–10. https://doi.org/10.5840/jpd20219206.

University and College Union (UCU). 2022. UCU Workload Survey 2021: Data Report. Accessed 30 September 2024. https://www.ucu.org.uk/media/12905/WorkloadReportJune22/pdf/WorkloadReportJune22.pdf

University of Sheffield. 2024. WAARC: Wellcome Anti-Ableist Research Culture. Website. Accessed 07 October 2024. https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/ihuman/waarc