Access and Disability¹

This issue of the newsletter is focussed around disability.

Had we been pulling this issue together around 30 years ago, we would probably have found that ‘access and disability’ was defined by tertiary education (and many other public) institutions largely in terms of physical access to buildings. Over the intervening period, buildings and spaces enabling access for anyone has become rightly routine for designers, planners and practitioners across education and doing so is now even enshrined in law. However, the last 30 years have also seen a significant broadening of the debate about ‘access and disability’ with progressively growing awareness of the range of factors which can act as ‘physical’ barriers to effective and successful participation in learning and the ways that institutions, teachers and other practitioners can help to remove or reduce them. What are the consequences and implications for institutions, and widening participation policymakers and practitioners, of this broadening of awareness?