This blog post was written by guest blogger Rebecca, an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto.
The official theme for National AccessAbility Week 2025 is "Breaking barriers together: Paving the way for an inclusive future." This slogan spotlights the need to work together to break down barriers for persons with disabilities. But, what does this mean concretely?
The university space that we inhabit is something collectively created. It is actively (re)created by the daily choices of faculty and students: after all, it is the faculty which carries out university policies and students which create a social environment that potentially upholds ableism. Unlike the medical model of disability, which sees disadvantages as inherent to disabilities, the social model sees these disadvantages as a result of the way in which society is organized. A student in a wheelchair is only “disadvantaged” if their classroom cannot be accessed via ramp, and a neurodivergent student is only socially-“disadvantaged” if they are excluded from our social experiences! Our collective actions create disadvantages for our peers with disabilities—but this also means our actions together have the power to change these barriers.
But, a difficulty of disability-inclusivity is the fact that every person with a disability experiences their own disability and barriers to education differently. “Disability”, therefore, is an embodied experience which can only be accounted for by consulting the individuals themselves. A top-down approach to addressing barriers often misses marginalized disability stakeholders, such as the newly-diagnosed (as many of my peers found themselves!) or persons with multiple-intersecting disadvantages. In sum, this means that any attempt to “break barriers together” must centre the phenomenology of students with disabilities themselves.
At the University of Toronto, this approach to addressing barriers has gained ground in the past few years. A fun spin on this was the Open Mic Night hosted by Accessibility Services, which allowed students who had used accessibility services to express their own experiences through any creative medium they wanted to. But, just because it was fun doesn’t mean discounting the seriously positive impact this event had on uplifting student perspectives that are typically marginalized and strengthening the community’s bond.
Another instance of this approach was a Trinity College initiative to use a focus group of students who experienced diverse barriers to improve the wellness functions at Trinity. Through inter-abled brainstorming, conversation, and joking over lunch we unearthed previously unconsidered barriers. Who would’ve thought of accessibility of disability-resources for commuter students, braille-labeling of the university’s crypt-like rooms, and a booklet (in different, accessible mediums) of available resources to “front-load” the social pressure of accessing university-resources, without the organic input of the students who experienced these very barriers themselves!
So, the call for action to take away is that we all need to work together to break barriers, by listening to and facilitating collaboration with our peers with disabilities. It is only by consistently applying this approach that we can all build a more inclusive future university space.
Thanks: Jasmin Guest, Community Wellness Coordinator (CWC) at Trinity College, for spearheading an innovative approach to developing barrier-free access.
Catherine Dumé, University of Toronto alumni and disability advocate, for her work in disability advocacy and spreading accessibility awareness among the student body.