This document examines the lack of impact of the #DisabilityTooWhite movement on North American campuses. It discusses how accessibility services on campuses have failed to address issues of intersectionality and lack diversity in staffing and practices. While critical studies programs discuss intersectionality, there is a disconnect with how disability services are provided in practice. Services tend to consider disability separately from factors like race, gender, and orientation. Outreach and intake processes also tend to be ethnocentric. Two years later, there has been little movement by campuses to address these issues, and tension between racialized students and services continues to grow. Sustainable solutions proposed include cultural training for staff, promoting diversity hiring, and collaborating with other student support

1. Examining the (lack of) impact of the
#disabilitytoowhite movement on North
American campuses
Thursday Sept 6th, 2018
ED6110-78 – Introduction to Research Methods in Education
Frederic Fovet, Faculty of Education

3. Personal introduction
• Currently Assistant Professor in Education at UPEI
• Previously Director of the Office for Students with Disabilities at McGill for 4 years
• Continue to act as consultant to colleges and universities on matters of accessibility
and Universal Design for Learning
• Heavily involved in UDL promotion in HE in Canada
• Recently carried out large external reviews of HE accessibility services
• Also became active on Twitter in 2017 in the promotion and use of the hashtag

4. Context
• In 2016, the #Disabilitytoowhite movement brought attention, within North
America, to the pressing lack of focus on Intersectionality within the Disability
movement.
• Initiative launched by blogger, Vilissa Thompson – original idea from Alice
Wong
• “has been starting discussions in the disability community regarding the
media visibility and representation of disabled people of color. At the same
time, it has been drawing controversy from those who do not understand or
agree with the hashtag.” (Blahovec, 2016)

6. Core issues around #Disabilitytoowhite
for Academia
• Lack of awareness of Intersectionality
• Lack of visual representation of diversity within the mediatized image of Disability
service providers
• Lack of diversity in staffing within Disability service providers
• Lack of critical theory and anti-oppression training amongst Disability service
providers
• The hashtag created debate, gave rise to emotion and offered hope that the
Disability movement, and more particularly Disability service provision, advocacy and
scholarship within Academia, might take notice and address this gap
• Link to our conference theme: What role does/can/should the academy play in
supporting disability activism?
• Did Academia fulfill his role/ responsibility with regards to #disabiitytoowhite two
years on?

7. Examples and illustration of this ‘tension’
• At best, it amount to a lack of cultural competency amongst HE Disability service
providers:
• International students may have a very different understanding of ‘Disability’
• Indigenous students are reluctant to approach accessibility services
• The intake format in Accessibility is not culturally congenial to many
• Accessibility staff can have very eurocentric expectations when it comes to self-
advocacy and disclosure
• Students who do not fit a ‘traditional’ profile more likely to be advised to take leave.
• Accessibility services construct outreach campaigns on campuses that are narrowly
relevant to a students who have been indentified and supported in K-12 – that
‘insider’ perspective leaves out many racialized students
• Accessibility services create QA processes that are appealing to these satisfied
‘insiders’ and fail to explore the perceptions of disatisfied service users

8. Examples and illustration of this ‘tension’
• At worse, it represents overt discriminatory practices in Disability service
provision:
• Students can be portrayed as ‘difficult’
• Tone, demeanour and reticence to grant certain services can betray staff biases and
narrow perceptions of what a student with Disabilities shoul look like and act like.
• Students can be forced to jump through adminstrative hoops that more or less
guarantee they give up on the process (particularly with regards to access to
diagnostic documentation)
• Students are sometimes actively discouraged from joining Student Advisory
Committees because they are perceived as ‘activists’
• Mediation and dialogue can be seen as less appropriate and racialized students need
to escalate the appeals process formally and often even need to seek out legal
advice (anecdotal illustrations of mediations I have wtnessed)

9. Reasons for this inertia in Academia
• Much talk of Intersectionality within Critical Studies in Academia, and yet
there continues to be a disconnect between discourse and practice in this
respect.
• Silo mentality in service provision – which means accessibility services
consider Disability in a void, and fail to consider race, socio-economic status,
gender, sexual orientation, etc.
• Fair degree of ethno-centricism in the format of service provision itself
• Outreach is often ethnocentric and functions with the desire to attract a
predetermined profile of service users with ‘insider’ knowledge of the way
the services function
• Accessibility staff are for the great majority white and often lack awareness of
racialization.

10. Outcomes?
• There has been little movement on North American campuses to address the
#disabilitytoowhite demands
• In the current climate of cuts and restructuring this has generally been seen as a
secondary issue
• Accessibility services have seen their service user demographics tripple over the last
decade. Staffing levels are low and waiting lists are monumental. There is little time
for reflection
• AHEAD in the US has made efforts to create a Diversity Committee, but there is little
tangible development.
• And all the while:
• Tension grows
• High level complaints increase in frequency
• Financial payouts are not rare
• Student demands are becoming more and more eloquent

11. Discussion
• Sustainable solutions for campuses attempting to address the lack of
Intersectionality within Disability service provision?
• HE Disability service providers resist on the basis that:
- they are too under-resourced to undertake awareness training
- racialized students represent too small a minority within their existing
population of service users to become a priority
- they are reluctant to examine racial underrepresentation in their current
service user base
- diversity hiring often is not an accepted campus practice
- they are unable to unpack the inherent ethno-centricism of their practices
(format of the intake, access to documentation, outreach, etc.)
- they often remain in denial about the racial homogeneity of their profession

12. Discussion and solutions
• Creation of student advisory committees
• Cultural awareness training and anti-oppresion workshops to be offered to
staff by students themselves
• Reflection on the racial make up/ identity of the staffing in these units and
concerted efforts to promote diversity hiring
• Deconstruction of the disability service provision format in HE
• Active collaboration and cooperation with staff from International Students
offices and Indigenous Students services, as well as advocacy groups
supporting students who feel racialized (joint advising?)
• More guidance from scholars on site who have expertise in Critical Theory

13. References
• Baily, M. (2017) Race and Disability in the Academy. The Sociological Review.
Retrieved from: https://www.thesociologicalreview.com/blog/race-and-disability-in-
the-academy.html
• Bell, C. M. (2011) Blackness and Disability: Critical Examinations and Cultural
Interventions. Germany: LIT Verlag.
• Blahovec, S. (2016, June 28) Confronting the Whitewashing Of Disability: Interview
with #DisabilityTooWhite Creator Vilissa Thompson. Huffington Post. Retrieved
from: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/sarah-blahovec/confronting-the-
whitewash_b_10574994.html
• Erkulwater, J. (2018). How the Nation’s Largest Minority Became White: Race Politics
and the Disability Rights Movement, 1970–1980. Journal of Policy History, 30(3), 367-
399
• Lukin, J. (2013) Disability and Blackness. In: D.J. Jennard (Ed.) The Disability Studies
Reader, 4th ed., New York, 308–34

14. Contact details
• Frederic Fovet (PhD.)
• Assistant Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Prince Edward Island
• ffovet@upei.ca
• @Ffovet
• www.implementudl.com