Abrams, Floyd, and Abes note that they decided to use the words accessible academic experiences because of critiques by other Critical Disability Scholars like Morstadt and Mia Mingus that inclusion is often framed around allowing disabled people to be part of spaces but not fully engage in those spaces and how often inclusion can be framed by non-disabled people by allowing disabled people into a space begrudgingly and then failing on accommodate, or provide access once someone is in the space.

Language Use: Inclusion vs. Access

Abrams et.al. pull from definitions offered from Mia Mingus and Sins Invalid to offer that access is the practice of solidarity toward disabled liberation that aims to fully enact disability justice.

Language Use: Definition of Access

The narratives analyzed in this article are narratives of authors Emily Abrams and Colleen Floyd about their undergraduate experiences. These narratives are framed by a note that Abrams is a white, queer, first-generation, disabled doctoral student and Floyd is a white, disabled, queer woman, who is a master's student. 

Methods of Study

- Percentage of Disabled Students in Higher Education
- Ableism in Academia
- Models of disability used in Universities

Background of Disabled Students in Higher Education

This paper delves into the personal narratives of students with psychological and learning disabilities to discuss how ableism shapes college students' academic experiences. This paper offers possibilities for how applying the tenets of crip theory as discussed in various crip manifestos outlined in work by Alison Kafer, give practical considerations on how to create accessible academic experiences.

University of Wisconsin - Madison

A subsection of disability studies theory, whose name was inspired by queer theory, that emphasizes creating a theoretical approach to disability that looks at how disability functions as an ideology, a paradigm, an epistemology, and a system of oppression in addition to an identity experience.

Crip Theory 

Abrams, E. J., Floyd, C. E., & Abes, E. S. (2024). Prioritizing Crip Futures: Applying Crip Theory to Create Accessible Academic Experiences in Higher Education. Disability Studies Quarterly, 43(4). https://doi.org/10.18061/dsq.v43i4.8270

Prioritizing Crip Futures: Applying Crip Theory to Create Accessible Academic Experiences in Higher Education

Crip Theorist Alison Kafer defines disability as a political category. Viewing disability as a political category makes it both contested and contestable. Disabled, Mad, sick, and ill people are therefore related through similar societal oppressions they experience because of their nonnormative bodyminds. 

Disability in Crip Theory

Like Queer Theory, Crip Theory seeks to destabilize definitions of who and what are normal. This effort to destabilize for both comes from how disabled people have been pathologized in medicine. The normal Crip Theory seeks to destabilize is an illusory normal of a perfect body image, health, and body function.

Crip Theory and the Conceptualization of the Normal

This concept involves "centering the disabled bodymind at the beginning/center of knowledge production". A combination of "crip" theory and "epistemology" (the study of knowledge), this framework challenges who gets to be the "knower." It argues that knowledge should stem directly from the lived experience of the disabled bodymind, rather than disability being a subject studied from the outside by non-disabled experts.

Theoretical Advancements in DS: Cripstemologies (Johnson & McRuer)

These are described as "spaces in which disability is rendered desirable". This concept aggressively rejects deficit-based models (which view disability as a tragedy or burden). Instead, it envisions futures and social spaces where disability is valued and wanted, aligning with Nusbaum's call for research that supports the "active construction" of disability as a positive ideology rather than a static problem.

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