IP Blog.1 Intersectionality and Disability
I was struck by the optimistic and constructive viewpoint expressed in Adepitan’s ParalympicsGB interview (2020), looking at inclusive supports as creating the conditions in which individuals can thrive and ‘shine’. I liked this focus on the underlying potential for success, with services and equipment lifting inherent capability to its true level, rather than as a patch enabling survival in a hostile or at best indifferent system. Adepitan highlights the intersection of race and disability he experiences as illustrative of challenges faced, and the support offered to enable athletes as a point of contrast to unaddressed systemic racisms.
The Fine Art leadership team have recently highlighted increasing participation of students with learning differences. We also have high participation of overseas students with varying levels of English proficiency. All students complete critical contextual written assignments, and several courses have identified awarding gaps on these units (cite FA Drawing data), highlighting the potential for intersectional challenges facing some students and embedded disadvantages for many. Even ignoring these additional challenges some students come to their library tutorials experiencing confusion around some of the language and expectations communicated in briefings, feeling left behind before they even start. All these challenges can then be compounded by the additional load of needing to work a significant number of hours in paid work, it was interesting to hear Christine Sun Kim talk about the impact of living in a more affordable city on her practice in light of this (2023).
There are some assistive tech and disability supports present and available in the library but these can be hidden – they are not well advertised or all available for self-help. We tend to think about disabilities and access in the static space and in documents rather than in planning events as advocated by Chay Brown (2023). Participating in a PEEPs process last year highlighted our unpreparedness for wheelchair access. Christine Sun Kim’s statement that it is easier for a hearing person to learn sign language than for a deaf person to learn to hear (2023) was an arresting explanation of the position of both deaf and visually impaired members of our community, also echoing the predicament that faces students working at UAL in their second or third language. We seem to position ourselves as a monolith, with those outside our norms needing to do all the adapting, creating a scenario that by omission excludes intersectional or acute needs.
Library research support 1:1’s having been on-request basis for my courses has potentially exacerbated this gap between actively maximising potential and passively making support available. I have experienced a difference in approaches, with some tutors setting up an introduction to research support for students identified as needing help, taking a proactive more interventionist approach as advocated by Pendakur (2016). I intend to encourage more tutors to nominate students for additional support and make these introductions. I am also making a set of much shorter and more focused library tutorial videos for Unit 9 element 2 in Autumn term 2025 as recommended by course teams and in peer feedback (Yates, 2025). I need to reflect further on how to resource or support a potential and success based service offer, rather than a reactive position that ignores intersectional or complex needs.
References
Adepitan, A. (2020). ‘Ade Adepitan gives amazing explanation of systemic racism’. Interview with Ade Adepitan. Interviewed by Nick Webborn for ParalympicsGB Legends, YouTube, 16 October. Youtube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnRjdol_j0c (Accessed: 26/04/2025).
Brown, C. (2023) ‘Intersectionality in Focus: Empowering Voices during UK Disability History Month 2023’ ParaPride, Youtube, 13 December. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yID8_s5tjc (Accessed: 26/04/2025).
Sun, C. (2023). Christine Sun Kim in ‘Friends & Strangers’ – Season 11 | Art21, YouTube, 01 November. Available at: https://youtu.be/2NpRaEDlLsI (accessed: 26/04/2025).
[Chapter TBC] Pendakur V. (2016) Closing the opportunity gap : identity-conscious strategies for retention and student success. In Vijay Pendakur (ed.) Closing the opportunity gap : identity-conscious strategies for retention and student success. Sterling : Stylus Publishing.
Yates B. (2025) PGCert Peer Feedback for Grace O’Driscoll. Available at : https://gracepgclibrarian.myblog.arts.ac.uk/2025/04/22/record-of-observation-and-review-of-my-teaching-practice-from-bernie/ (Accessed: 26/04/2025).
I like your reflection on ‘There are some assistive tech and disability supports present and available in the library but these can be hidden – they are not well advertised or all available for self-help.’ This reflection made me think about my own context and whether I could add one or two sentences during the induction sessions to better highlight these services, supports, or tools for my students. I also believe some of the assistive tech or tips could benefit a wider range of students, even if they don’t disclose their needs or only require support for a short period rather than for their entire university journey.
Thanks for your comment Gwen. Definitely the assistive tech is helpful across all students. I usually position it as available for everyone whether due to support needs, or in avoiding fatigue and encountering information from different perspectives and sensory experiences such as listening to take a break from reading. That way nobody feels singled out or needs to disclose; people would all have access to the same supports for a variety of reasons, while making sure that those who might rely on it for equitable experiences have full visibility of how to use what they might need.
Hello Grace. Thanks so much for this blog post. It’s really interesting to hear how issues of disability manifest in the library context (e.g. assistive tech, PEEPs, 1:1s). Your commitment to a success based offer rather than being reactive is so clear.
You’ve mentioned possibly encouraging tutors to nominate more students for additional support – and this could potentially be helpful in building networks of support for students. Do you have any thoughts about strategies that might take a more inclusive approach (i.e. strategies/practices that can be implemented in your context for the broader student population, rather than on an individual basis)?
Thanks for your comment Carys, I’m working on making recorded tutorials supporting written units more available and more accessible so that all students have the same support available, whether they access individual help or not. I’ve been taking feedback on board to make these recordings shorter and more focused so that students can go straight to the content they need as and when they need it, and steps like offering QR codes as well as links, coming out of last term’s peer feedback. I’ve also fed-back to a library group creating online modules for information skills, and into reading list bibliographies, based on inclusivity comments I’ve gathered over time from group sessions. Slowly we are building up an offer where inclusivity is built in to all the different support channels.
Ooh what a great set of inclusive practices – thank you for sharing! And I can start to see how this comment links to your proposed intervention idea too. 🙂
Thank you, Grace, for this thoughtful and honest engagement with the structural and intersectional barriers being faced by our students. Your analysis demonstrates how intersecting systems of disadvantage affect students with complex identities- showing how linguistic diversity, learning differences, as well as economic precarity, do not operate in isolation. For instance, a racialised international student compounded with a learning difference and a financial challenge- each of these identities can in fact worsen the impact of the others. This echoes Crenshaw’s sentiments that such systems (racism, transphobia, ableism, xenophobia, classism, etc.), are not “additive”, but rather “multiplicative” in effect. Your reflection thus accurately identifies how institutional structures can replicate inequality when they only accommodate “standard” students, and when the institution’s default forms of communication and or expectations fail to meet all students, the result is nothing but a form of structural exclusion.
Your commentary about overseas students grappling with the English language speaks to some kind of “linguistic imperialism” (Phillipson, 1992) which often traverses or overlaps with race and cultural identity. Is it then correct to say such academic expectations entrenched in the Western critical theory can relegate or marginalise the non-Western epistemologies and those students who are not fluent in this language? This is intensified when you said the students feel “left behind before they even start” (one can literally sense the emotional toll of institutional exclusion), and the burden of adaptation is on the student, not the system.
Thanks for your comment Hatie, absolutely agree with your point about linguistic imperialism and provision for overseas students, especially given how many international students we have. I wasn’t referring specifically to international students with this point – often the issue of language exclusion is experienced by home UK students who for lots of reasons have not encountered some of the language we use as standard as an institution. Explaining some of our academic phrasing or providing recommended explanatory resources would benefit both international students and home students who might be the first in their families to come to university, or who might just use other words to describe things and find unfamiliar terms a barrier. Often both home and international students coming for research support want support in understanding some of the language of the brief as a first step and have struggled to ask for clearer definitions in the class / group environment.
Oh, I see. Quite interesting, right.
Thank you Grace, I enjoyed your post very much and was struck by your comments on the potential to proactively introduce students to academic support to ensure that initial barrier is removed. This way they have access to assistive tech and other disability supports. Students’ reluctance to reach out is then negated and using these particular library services is normalised. I wonder if the reluctance stems in part from students not wanting to be othered, or feel that reaching out gives the perception that their academic standards are somehow lower as well as other socio economic factors. Additionally, I wonder if there is a way to celebrate neuro diverse and multi-lingual abilities as a positive and then address any additional needs based on their English based written and verbal submissions. I wonder what work we do here to highlight how neurodiversity is strongly represented in the creative sector.
Thanks for this comment Maliha, I love the idea of celebrating our multilingual and neurodiverse communities. As a parent of school age children I have found that London primary and secondary schools I’ve experienced are much more celebratory about language diversity than we are in H.E.. I wonder if this is because we have this distinction between ‘home’ and ‘overseas’ students, rather than seeing our student body as one cohesive community, which is fully ‘ours’. We try to make our library displays for all awareness weeks and months celebratory and ensure the focus of many of our materials around neurodiversity is on harnessing the advantages, particularly for creativity. I need to think about how we can do better on language celebration in similar ways.