What?

What kind of discrimination and barriers do persons with disabilities face in educational settings?

Exclusion from Educational Opportunities

Disabled individuals may face discrimination in the admissions process or be denied access to certain educational programs or extracurricular activities based on their disability. The quality of education offered is of inferior quality. 

Physical Barriers

Many educational institutions lack proper infrastructure to accommodate students with physical disabilities, such as wheelchair ramps, accessible restrooms, and elevators. 

Attitudinal Barriers

Negative attitudes and stereotypes towards disabled individuals can create a hostile or unwelcoming environment in educational settings. These attitudes may lead to lower expectations for their academic performance, limited opportunities for participation, and social exclusion.

Lack of Accessibility

Educational materials, including textbooks, classroom activities, and online resources, are often not accessible to students with disabilities. Digital inclusion is vital to achieve an inclusive environment for persons with sensory impairments. 

Inadequate Support Services

Many students with disabilities require additional support services, such as assistive technologies, sign language interpreters, or personal care assistants, to facilitate their participation in education. However, these services are often inadequate or unavailable, further marginalising disabled individuals. Furthermore, societal barriers in transportation, rehabilitation and health services prevent access to education regardless of school support measures. 

Adapted from: UNESCO Right to education handbook and Right to Education website.

What do intersectionality and multiple discrimination mean?

Intersectionality refers to the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, gender, class, and ability, which create overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination and disadvantage. Coined by legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, intersectionality highlights how individuals may experience multiple forms of discrimination or privilege simultaneously, and how these factors interact to shape their experiences and opportunities.

Multiple discrimination, on the other hand, refers to the experience of facing discrimination based on more than one characteristic or identity. For example, an individual who is both a woman and a person of colour may experience discrimination that is unique to their intersectional identity, which cannot be fully understood by examining gender discrimination or racial discrimination separately. Multiple discrimination underscores the complexity of discrimination and the need to address intersecting forms of oppression in social justice efforts.

Women and girls with disabilities

In education women and girls with disabilities are often discriminated against based on their disability as well as their gender. In some countries harmful norms and cultural traditions prevent girls from having an equal access to elementary education compared to boys. There are barriers in higher education too. In the European Union only 13 % of women with disabilities have a university degree compared to 29% of women without disabilities. With men the education gap is smaller: 17 % of men with disabilities attain tertiary education compared to 27 % men without disabilities. (European Institute for Gender Equality, 2018 )

Right to education handbook (UNESCO 2019, p. 89–90) explains: “Harmful gender stereotypes and wrongful gender stereotyping affects girls before they step into a classroom and even prevent them from going to school. For example, stereotypical views that girls are domestic, homemakers, and caregivers may lead families to question the point of sending their daughters to school if they are to become wives and mothers. Gender-based violence against women and girls Gender-based violence (GBV) against women and girls, is a form of discrimination and a human rights violation. GBV can keep girls out of school temporarily or indefinitely, as well as leading to underperformance.”

LGBTQ students with disabilities  

LGBTQ students with disabilities may also face multiple discrimination. For example, in the United States only 15 % of LGBTQ teens with a disability reported that they always feel safe in the classroom compared to 31 % of LGBT teenagers without a disability. (Human Rights Campaign foundation 2020.)

What are the rights of persons with disabilities in the context of education?

This is how the Easy Language version of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), pdf explains it (pp. 26–28):

Persons with disabilities have a right to education.

Countries will make sure disabled people have the opportunity to go to mainstream schools and can carry on learning throughout their lives so that:  

• Disabled people are able to develop their skills and abilities and take their place in the world.  
• Disabled people are not excluded from (kept out of) any sort of education.  
• Disabled people can go to good local schools, and don’t have to pay for them, the same as everyone else.  
• Disabled people have their needs met as far as possible.  
• Disabled people get proper support to learn.  
• People can learn Braille and other ways of communicating as needed.  
• Teach people sign language and see it as a language of the deaf community.
• Deaf and blind children get the right education and support for them to learn.  
• Make sure teachers have the right skills.  
• Provide the right support for disabled people to continue their education as adults if they want to.