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Disability Invisibility in Academia: How to Sup- port Disabled People in Research and Beyond
Ira Kraemer and Elizabeth Kolberg
Imagine that you have found the ideal new member for your lab with the perfect skills and background to contribute. Best of all, the individual has accepted your offer to join the lab! After you share the offer letter, the Office of Disability Services contacts you about the new lab member. Do you have any idea what accommoda- tions this person might need? Have you fostered a spirit of inclusion, leading to this person disclosing their dis- ability to you?
What qualifies as a disability? The United States Ameri- cans with Disabilities Act (ADA) defines disability as “a person who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activity.” However, because this definition is a matter of United States law, it means that the definition is a legal one that includes individuals with any record of a disability and individuals who do not openly identify as having a dis- ability even if they meet these criteria.
Many disabled individuals feel that there is a stigma asso- ciated with identifying as disabled. Throughout most of their lifetime, disabled people are implicitly and explic- itly told by society that having a disability is a bad thing. Society tells children not to stare and not to ask about differences. Disabled people are called “differently abled” or “people with special needs” instead of people with dis- abilities (Poe, 2018). This is often due to the stigma of having a disability.
Aside from people with very noticeable physical disabil- ities, disability has been a relatively unacknowledged identity until recently. Within diversity initiatives at most universities, disability is not considered an important part of a diverse academic system or impor- tant to academia. There are many disabled scientists working in academia who are leaders and contribute to highly important findings within their field. How- ever, many disabled people hide their disability out of
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https://doi.org/10.1121/AT.2021.17.3.75
fear of judgment and stigma. In this essay, we explain why fostering an accessible environment can make a huge difference in the lives of any disabled person in academia. And, although this article focuses on the academic setting, many of the issues discussed are also relevant to settings outside of the academic world. Indeed, accessibility in general is important for creat- ing a welcoming environment for disabled people in any profession. Specific accessibility needs and solu- tions will differ, but there is a universal need to be accommodating to anyone with a disability.
How to Support Disabled Individuals
in Academia
Disability is rarely considered by funding agencies or within demographic surveys in academia and rarely analyzed with intersectional identities such as race, class, religion, gender identity, and sexual orientation. Individuals who openly identify as having a disability are often underrepresented in academia (Brown and Leigh, 2018; Swenor et al., 2020). Ableism (discrimi- nation against disabled individuals), stigmas (cultural biases), and inaccessibility in academia may be sev- eral reasons that students, staff, and faculty often choose to hide their disabilities (Brown and Leigh, 2018; Marks and Bayer, 2019; Ramírez, 2019). Abled people (people without disabilities) need to consider how inaccessibility, lack of understanding, perpetua- tion of ableist language in research, and lack of openly disabled representation can harbor an unwelcoming and even hostile environment to anyone in academia with a disability.
To create a welcoming environment for disabled people, abled people need to be willing to learn from people with disabilities themselves, acknowledge when they are uninformed about a topic, and reach out for resources about how to implement accessibility at their university or other workplace (Burgstahler, 2012).
Volume 17, issue 3 | Fall 2021 • Acoustics Today 75