given the overwhelmingly inadequate plans colleges have for students to (not) return to campuses, a lot of ppl have been asking "is zoom university/remote learning even worth it?" while ignoring what disabled people have already said about this whole thing

granted, the fact that colleges so readily adapted to mass remote learning at the start of the pandemic is a slap in the face to disabled students who have asked and been denied this particular accommodation before

but when ppl are uncertain about committing to an entire semester of remote learning bc it's "not as good" as what they're used to (among other reasons), what they're really pointing out is the fact that access has never been a pedagogical priority for the academy

as the pandemic exacerbates disparities in access needs for students in a classroom, a transition to video conference calling software as a blanket remedy will obviously fail to meet the needs of everyone involved, even as it stands to accommodate those previously denied access

and it's because a majority of profs are unequipped to imagine/create an accessible classroom that they are struggling to come up with teaching methods and strategies to adjust in the moment and in most cases they uphold the tradition of pushing disabled students out

if the responses that colleges are having to the pandemic tells us anything, it's that for a majority of profs and admin, this is their first time really grappling with the question of how to create a learning environment that fulfills the vastly different needs of it's students

the academy as it stands does not and cannot engage with a practice/politics of access rooted in disability justice bc disabled people have never "belonged" in the classroom anyway

and it goes without saying that calls for access as envisioned by disability justice activists and scholars is not just about reinventing the classroom and developing new modalities of learning but about reckoning with the materiality of "higher education" itself