Enabling University: Impairment, (Dis)ability and Social Justice in Higher Education [Paperback]

This work takes the most recent, interdisciplinary research and demonstrates how to make higher education institutions open, accessible and socially just for staff and students with disabilities. Combining the scholarly fields of media platform management, information literacy, internet studies, mobility studies and disability studies, this book offers a guide and method to consider how students and staff with differing needs move through university processes, spaces and interfaces.?It captures the challenges and potentials of both the online and offline university. The key concept of the book is universal design. This term and theory is used to move beyond the medical and social model of disability that disconnect and separate the issues of disability and impairment from core societal concerns.?This book confirms that most of us will be touched by impairment through our lives. When matched with the necessity to retrain and gain new skills for a post-recession future, there must be a renewed commitment to not only the widening participation agenda of higher education, but also the enabling of universities for men and women with impairments.Prologue: Disabled are Able?.- Introduction: Failure is not an Option.- Part One: Politics.- 1. The Politics of Stairs.- 2. The Politics of Mobility.- 3. The Politics of Models.- 4. The Politics of Labels.- Part Two: Difference.- 5. Why Universities Matter.- 6. Beyond Stigma.- 7. Difference and Judgment.- Part Three: Design.- 8. Intervention through Teacher Education.- 9. Universal Design:? Designing for Life (and Learning).- Conclusion: Futures.- Prologue: Disabled are Able?.Configures strategies to open our universities to staff and students with impairments Considers how students and staff with differing needs move through university processes and spaces Demonstrates why discussions of impairment and disability are integral to any educational programme or policy Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras