Transforming Undergraduate Education from Below: How Students Make Disabilities Visible and Universities a Working Space for Themselves

Abstract

When young people acquire a higher education entrance qualification and transition to university, they experience a biographical turning point. This holds even more for people with disabilities. On campus, students must navigate barriers and discrimination.

Many European universities have started to improve campuses, curricula, and social activities and have developed diversity agendas that focus on gender, age, and migration. However, they have rarely reached out to persons with disabilities. To examine how students experience barriers while entering their undergraduate programs, this paper focuses on the experiences of students with disabilities in German and Austrian university undergraduate programmes. We combine the analysis of institutional offers with life stories. Four life narratives of undergraduates in diverse majors at different German-speaking universities give insights into how students with disabilities manage the transition into academic training and undergo subject formation. How they contact fellow students and negotiate with academic staff and administrative bodies depends on their individual circumstances. The analysis shows that high school experiences, family support, knowledge and acceptance of disability compensation, and their willingness to disclose are central. The binding of support to medical reasons is primarily responsible for the challenges students encountered in their studies. The students must develop their sense of belonging and self-identify as disabled. Inclusion-sensitive programmes and measures thus reduce barriers. Accordingly, social factors come to the fore when removing barriers in academic training.