Reframing Disability in Higher Education: Toward Equity-Centered, Justice-Informed Practice

Reframing disability within higher education is essential for advancing equitable access, as current structures too often reflect and reproduce systemic ableism rather than dismantle it. I am a graduate student studying higher education at the University of Minnesota. Before coming to the University, I worked as a K-12 classroom teacher, where I taught students with language-based learning disabilities. As a currently non-disabled individual, I recognize the importance of reflecting on my own positionality to better understand how to more effectively support college students with visible and invisible disabilities, especially those with multiple marginalized identities. With a review of concepts, this article invites a rethinking of disability in higher education contexts and explores how principles of critical disability studies, disability justice, and disability resource center practices are in conversation to advance fair and inclusive practices that support all students.

To connect my background as a teacher with my current studies, I have been serving as a graduate intern this semester at the Disability Resource Center (DRC) at the University of Minnesota. Alongside my responsibilities at the DRC, I have explored the topics of disability justice and investigated the work of the Critical Disability Studies Collective, an interdisciplinary community of scholars here at the University of Minnesota. This inquiry gained particular relevance in spring 2025, when the Critical Disability Studies Collective and the College of Liberal Arts received a grant from the Mellon Foundation to support the development of a critical disability studies program at the university.

 

Disability Resources at the University

The Disability Resource Center (DRC) at the University of Minnesota, operated by the Office of Equity and Diversity, is dedicated to promoting access, accessibility, and collaborative education across the University (Disability Resource Center, n.d.). The DRC provides a range of accommodations for students, faculty, and staff, including testing support, note-taking, sign language interpretation, captioning, ADA-compliant design, and other accessibility supports. Equitable educational approaches that include people with disabilities are often, if not entirely, absent from conventional higher education settings. In this regard, DRC accommodations bridge gaps in the many instances of academic content and experiences that lack inclusive design. 

The Disability Resource Center adheres to the social model of disability, a framework that emphasizes that disability results from societal and structural barriers that exclude, disadvantage, and oppress people and is not conceptualized as a problem of individual deficits (Oliver, 1990). The social model approach recognizes that society has maintained systems that privilege certain bodies, minds, and abilities while marginalizing and harming others. By contrast, the social model emphasizes that disability is a natural variation of the human experience (Oliver, 1990). This understanding is closely related to disability justice concepts.

 

Disability Justice

Disability justice moves beyond individual accommodations to challenge ableism and oppression as a community-based activist framework (Sins Invalid, 2019). Emerging from the U.S. disability rights movement, disability justice expands the focus from access to collective liberation. Principles of disability justice describe the importance of intersectionality, anti-capitalism, sustainability, interdependence, self-determination, and community, while recognizing the inherent wholeness of all individuals (Piepzna-Samarasinha, 2018; Sins Invalid, 2019). Disability justice calls for radical access, creating spaces where people may thrive, regardless of ability (Piepzna-Samarasinha, 2018; Price, 2015).

 

Critical Disability Studies

Critical disability studies (CDS) offers an epistemology grounded in lived experience, challenging dominant intellectual frameworks that tend to be disembodied or detached (Carter et al., 2017). CDS aligns with a disability justice framework to resist and challenge narratives of deficit or resilience to describe people with disabilities (Dolmage, 2017). The field of critical disability studies draws from every academic discipline and is considered an interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary collaborative framework (Critical Disability Studies Collective, n.d.).

The term bodymind (Price, 2015) reflects the complex nature of the human experience and captures the interconnection between the emotional and physical. It is also similarly associated with discourse about trauma (Carter, 2021; Van der Kolk, 2014). For a person with a disability, the bodymind concept can support the creation of an identity that resists functional limitations and advocates for people to define their relationships with disability (Carter et al., 2017; Dolmage, 2017; Price, 2015). Bodymind also emphasizes the value of prioritizing self-sustaining practices and well-being rather than productivity and relentless striving (Carter, 2021; Carter et al., 2017; Piepzna-Samarasinha, 2018; Price, 2015).

Critical disability studies scholars frame disability as a social identity shaped by culture and systemic power structures (Carter et al. 2017; Dolmage, 2017; Kafer, 2013). Informed by crip theory, queer theory, and gender and sexuality studies, critical disability studies examines how definitions of normalcy marginalize disabled people and sustain ableist control over bodies and behaviors (Kafer, 2013; McRuer, 2006). While disability justice emphasizes activism and collective care, critical disability studies offers a theoretical critique of societal and institutional structures that construct ableism and disability from within the academy, advocating for fundamental systemic change (Carter et al. 2017; Dolmage, 2017).

 

Implications for Student Affairs Professionals

Critical disability studies offers student affairs professionals a lens for rethinking student development and equity. This field expands disability justice principles, supporting identity-affirming practices and self-determination for students while resisting socially imposed cultural norms (Abes, 2019; Dolmage, 2017; McRuer, 2006). While disability services in higher education focus on individualized accommodations and improved access to resources, critical disability studies broaden the discourse around disability to include social, cultural, political, and economic dimensions (Dolmage, 2017). Disability justice in higher education involves reimagining institutional structures and practices to create coalitions of resistance in support of liberation (Kafer, 2013). 

Reframing disability in higher education requires a fundamental shift in mindset to drive meaningful, lasting change. This shift fosters learning environments constructed with flexibility and belonging in mind (Dolmage, 2017). While the work of disability resource centers continues to evolve, this is one aspect of the broader effort to improve the higher education experience for students with disabilities (Carter et al., 2017). A strengths-based, holistic approach grounded in disability justice enables educators to move beyond deficit-based narratives and recognize students with disabilities as valuable members of their academic communities. Their diverse identities, experiences, and ways of being enrich both their learning and academic communities, and they deserve environments that affirm their identities and support meaningful engagement (Dolmage, 2017; Strayhorn, 2015; Yosso, 2005). Student affairs professionals can draw on critical disability studies and disability justice frameworks to create space for students with disabilities and foster a critical dialogue about the institutional systems that shape all students’ experiences (Carter, 2021; Dolmage, 2017).

Higher education professionals have the opportunity to challenge traditional structures that fail to serve our communities. While broader social justice movements often overlook disability, as future leaders in student affairs, we must ask:

• How can we integrate concepts of disability justice and critical disability studies into discourse in our academic communities?

• How can we encourage thoughtful examination of institutional norms in our higher education spaces to prioritize creating a more equitable and ethical practice?

• How can we engage in reflexive practices that resist disconnection from embodied experience and instead foster a holistic approach to intellectual work that supports sustainability and thriving within our academic communities?

 

References

Abes, E. S. (2019). Crip theory: Dismantling ableism in student development theory. In E. S. Abes, S. R. Jones, & D.-L. Stewart (Eds.), Rethinking college student development theory: Using critical frameworks (pp. 64–73). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003446835-8

Carter, A. M., Catania, T., Schmitt, S., & Swenson, A. (2017). Bodyminds like ours: An autoethnographic analysis of graduate school, disability, and the politics of disclosure. In S. L. Kerschbaum, L. T. Eisenman, & J. M. Jones (Eds.), Disclosure and higher education (pp. 95–113). University of Michigan Press. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9426902

Carter, A. M. (2021). When silence said everything: Reconceptualizing trauma through critical disability studies. Lateral, 10(1). https://doi.org/10.25158/L10.1.8.

Critical Disability Studies Collective. (n.d.). Critical Disability Studies Initiative. University of Minnesota. https://cdsc.umn.edu

Disability Resource Center. (n.d.). Disability Resource Center: Mission. University of Minnesota. https://disability.umn.edu/mission

Dolmage, J. T. (2017). Academic ableism: Disability and higher education. University of Michigan Press. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9708722

Kafer, A. (2013). Feminist, queer, crip. Indiana University Press.

McRuer, R. (2006). Crip theory: Cultural signs of queerness and disability. New York University Press.

Piepzna-Samarasinha, L. L. (2018). Care work: Dreaming disability justice. Arsenal Pulp Press.

Price, M. (2015). The bodymind problem and the possibilities of pain. Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, 30(1), 268–284. https://doi.org/10.1111/hypa.12127

Oliver, M. (1990). The politics of disablement: A sociological approach. St. Martin’s Press.

Sins Invalid. (2019). Skin, tooth, and bone: The basis of movement is our people. Primedia eLaunch.

Strayhorn, T. L. (2015). Student development theory in higher education: A social psychological approach. Routledge.

Van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.

Yosso, T. J. (2005). Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. Race Ethnicity and Education, 8(1), 69–91. https://doi.org/10.1080/1361332052000341006