This research project uses a critical realist framework to analyse the role that academics play in the equal access to higher education for students with disabilities. This is important because the massification of higher education (Altbach, Reisberg and Wit, 2017) combined with international legislation in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) (UNDESA, 2006) has contributed to an international increase in students who declare a disability, attending higher education (Langorgen, Kermit and Magnus, 2020). At the same time, although higher education institutions (HEIs) have responsibility for equal access and are subject to domestic anti-discriminatory legislation based on the CRPD, in practice international research has found that students are expected to take responsibility for seeking out support where they need it and tend to depend on the benevolence of individual academics to provide that support, despite the rights conferred to them by the CRPD (Langorgen, Kermit and Magnus, 2020).
In the UK, a reduction in funding for individual students with disabilities in 2016 (Willetts, 2014) explicitly compelled universities to take responsibility for students no longer eligible for state support. It also saw a policy drive to fill the funding gap through promoting the reduction of individual adjustments for students with disabilities and making changes to teaching practices in the name of inclusion (Disabled Students Sector Leadership Group, 2017). The reduction in funding has taken place in the context of marketisation and its principles of minimising costs, flexibility in the workforce and a focus on individualism (Peters, 2021). It is against this neoliberal background that we explored the extent that the responsibilities of institutions to students with disabilities are devolved to individual academic staff. Therefore, the questions this research is designed to answer are: what role do academics play in the institutional obligation of universities towards students with disabilities? And how does the current culture of support impact students with disabilities, from the perspective of academics?
Critical realism’s ontological perspective or ‘intransitive dimension’ (Bhaskar, 2018, p.13) is drawn upon to objectify the accessible systems and practices of higher education in a new way.’ We claim that these systems and practices exist in the structure of the university independently of any awareness or knowledge of them, for example by students, parents and staff. We then use an interpretive epistemology to analyse the experiences of academics to reveal new knowledge, or the ‘transitive’ dimension (Bhaskar, 2018, p.13), of these systems and practices. We did this by exposing absences, where absences are those factors which academics expect to be present but are absent. We then explore how those absences negatively affect students with disabilities.

The purpose of the research was to devise a critical realist framework to go beyond the empirical or observed barriers to students with disabilities, and the actual occurrences that happen whether or not they are observed. The aim was to expose the hidden, invisible, and complex but real events affecting students with disabilities from the perspective of academics and to attempt to explain events that come to light in this process. It is an important perspective because these real but hidden events cannot be resisted, negotiated or mitigated by students. Twenty semi-structured interviews of academic staff at different career levels were carried out across two universities using a purposive sampling strategy to capture participants who had consistent experience of working directly with students with disabilities. Participants from specific subjects were targeted based on a report by Williams et al., (2017) which confirmed that students with specific impairments were more likely to choose certain subjects than their non-disabled peers. The critical realist methodology uses an innovative application of Bhaskar and Danemark’s (2006, p.290) “necessarily laminated system” and drew on Brown’s (2009) study of the learning environment, to analyse accessibility in the university environment and expose absences as a causal mechanism, at different layers of reality. This research takes a broad and pluralistic view of disability, congruent to critical realism which does not align to a specific theory of disability, and supports Gustavsson’s (2004, p.63) claim that “disability is differently understood from different perspectives.” It also actively chooses to use the term ‘students with disabilities’ in line with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities rather than the politicly charged term ‘disabled people’.

This research confirms that in the UK, marketisation and funding cuts combined with blurred boundaries and absences in the systems and practices at all levels of the framework has led to the responsibility for supporting students with disabilities being devolved to individual academics. The critical realist framework facilitated the exposure of the role of the academic as an intermediary between students with disabilities and the systems, practices and structures of the university. Academics are often the first to be made aware of physical barriers to accessing learning and the associated effects of psycho-emotional disablism (Reeve, 2012). They are the first point of contact for students declaring a disability, or ineligible for funding, or waiting for funding applications to be processed. They are also the negotiators and interpreters of inefficient IT systems and inaccessible information. The assumptions in this research are that different groups within an organisation have a specific perspective and previously hidden knowledge about aspects of the systems and practices of universities that effect the rights of students with disabilities and other marginalised groups. The critical realist framework used in this study could be used in future research and in different countries and cultures to expose this deep reality and therefore facilitate change.

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