Time Harms

The process of enrolling for accommodations requires individuals to submit medical documents as proof of their disability so that campus accessibility offices can determine appropriate accommodations on a case-by-case basis.

“The process of enrolling for accommodations requires individuals to submit medical documents as proof of their disability so that campus accessibility offices can determine appropriate accommodations on a case-by-case basis [42].”

Universities often do not anticipate the dynamic and often unpredictable nature of disability, highlighting limitations with university systems.

“Universities often do not anticipate the dynamic and often unpredictable nature of disability, highlighting limitations with university systems [42, 61].”

Today, the medical model of disability still dominates institutional settings, such as universities, where access is legitimized through diagnosis and where support is given on a case-by-case basis.

“Today, the medical model of disability still dominates institutional settings, such as universities [11, 61], where access is legitimized through diagnosis and where support is given on a case-by-case basis [42].”

Accommodations are often described as "retrofit," framing accessibility as personal responsibility.

“Rather than addressing systemic issues, accommodations are often described as “retrofit,” framing accessibility as personal responsibility [11, 42, 61].”

Institutions mobilize "access" in ways that intentionally and unintentionally reproduce ableist norms of "independence" and productivity.

“Disability studies scholar Margaret Price [42] and sociologist Tanya Titchkosky [61] interrogate how institutions mobilize “access” in ways that intentionally and unintentionally reproduce ableist norms of “independence” and productivity.”

Disabled people live according to temporalities that remain invisible to privileged groups who can afford to overlook them.

“Price [42] describes this through the phenomenon of “crip spacetime,” a material-discursive reality in which disabled people live according to temporalities that remain invisible to privileged groups who can afford to overlook them.”

Significant effort must be expended to ensure spatial, visual, or temporal access, producing an expertise among disabled people who must navigate inaccessible university conditions.

“These realities demand that “significant effort must be expended to ensure spatial, visual, or temporal access”[42], producing an expertise among disabled people who must navigate inaccessible university conditions.”

Because individual access is bureaucratized through the process of accommodations, access labour and the accompanying challenges experienced by disabled people become obscured.

“Because individual access is bureaucratized through the process of accommodations, access labour and the accompanying challenges experienced by disabled people become obscured [42, 61].”

Requests for non-standard accommodations were difficult to attain without additional medical documentation, potentially resulting in delay and denial of claims.

“Requests for what students call ‘non-standard’ accommodations were difficult to attain without additional medical documentation, potentially resulting in delay and denial of claims [42].”

Access labour can be reframed as routine infrastructuring: sustained, collaborative, and resistant to the reactive, ad hoc model of accommodations offered by institutions.

“In doing so, we extend HCI scholarship by reframing access labour as routine infrastructuring: sustained, collaborative, and resistant to the reactive, ad hoc model of accommodations offered by institutions [20, 42, 49, 61].”

It is not possible nor desirable to make infrastructures and the design of services frictionless or adaptive for disabled communities.

“Rather than making infrastructures and the design of services “frictionless” or “adaptive” for disabled communities — which is not possible nor desirable because disability is an ongoing negotiation of access [21, 42, 61] in which frictions will emerge [20] — student groups strategically leverage points of disruption to confront authority, compel negotiations, and demand systemic change.”

Disability is an ongoing negotiation of access in which frictions will emerge.

“disability is an ongoing negotiation of access [21, 42, 61] in which frictions will emerge [20]”

These breakdowns function as moments of infrastructural inversion that make visible the institutional exclusions which otherwise remain imperceptible to those not directly affected.

“In line with Bowker and Star [5], these breakdowns function as moments of infrastructural inversion that make visible the institutional exclusions which otherwise remain imperceptible to those not directly affected [11, 42, 56].”