Transgressing Institutional Limits to Access in Post-Secondary Disability Service Offices: A Critical Race Theory and BIPOC Mad Studies Framework

Post-Secondary Disability Service Offices (DSOs) have been given particular attention by the Ontario Human Rights Commission through an influx of policy documents released in the past 15 years (OHRC, 2002; OHRC 2003; OHRC, 2004; OHRC 2017; OHRC, 2018). Located at the intersection of Critical Race Theory and BIPOC Mad studies (da Silveira Gorman, 2013), this project seeks to introduce a transnational approach (da Silveira Gorman, 2013) to the analysis of the DSO, by asking the central questions—how are definitions of accessibility mediating systemic marginalization of BIPOC students in DSOs? “What critical representations of disablement have been promoted or sidelined” (da Silveira Gorman, 2018, p. 457) in Ontario post-secondary education? How are eligibility requirements for DSOs reifying categories of identity? This study interviews BIPOC Accessibility Advisors and BIPOC students in Ontario, to understand the barriers which exist for racialized students in the DSO and the institution at large. Reports from Accessibility Advisors and students reveal that the DSO is organized around a conceptualization of “disability history” that generalizes disability as a “white, middle class phenomenon” (da Silveira Gorman, 2018, p. 454), which in turn, impacts BIPOC’s student’s ability to access services in their post-secondary institutions. BIPOC Accessibility Advisors share ways their lived experience has informed the ways they provide services to their BIPOC students. Reports from BIPOC students explicate the manner in which services in the DSO are navigated despite the terrain, and innovative ways students understand themselves within these services. Finally, best practices in DSO service provision are suggested to improve for BIPOC students by challenging the student at centre of the service provision imagination.