Negotiating access and belonging in a higher education institution: a postqualitative narrative

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to foreground accessibility as a necessary aspect of equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI). We go about this by highlighting shared experiences of negotiating institutional ableism together, as a disabled scholar employed at a HEI in the UK, and a non-disabled, culturally and linguistically diverse individual employed to bridge inaccessible spaces. Drawing upon Wong’s (2023) conceptual framework of spatial belonging in higher education, which traverses the intersecting terrain of physical, digital, relational and structural spaces, we develop a postqualitative narrative demonstrating the limitations of narrowly defined legal protections that fall short of implementing inclusive ideals. The narrative draws attention to the ways that ‘access intimacy’, understood as shared commitments to accessibility, develops informally, which excuses HEIs from taking responsibility to institutionalise it. We contemplate accessibility as a relational concern and build an argument for learning from our experiences to inform the development of key accessibility considerations into institutional ways of working and relating to difference. The paper is significant for engaging principles from critical disability studies as conceptual means by which to consider accessibility, and the relational account provided contributes a collaborative perspective frequently experienced but not widely considered in higher education research for strengthening EDI.

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