Inclusive online and distance education for learners with dis/abilities

When Mary’s grandparents were children in the 1930s, they lived in a rural area in the Snake River Valley on the border between Oregon and Idaho in the United States of America. At the young age of 7, Mary’s grandmother’s brother Howard drank some machine oil for a farming implement. The quaff burnt his vocal cords and caused long-term damage. After the accident, other children at school made fun of his voice, and he got into fights. Educators in the local school recommended that he be sent to a state school in Idaho. From childhood until his death in 1979, Great Uncle Howard lived and worked at that school. Though it is difficult to locate and access records, there is a possibility that the school benefited from Howard’s labor while school officials collected monetary government benefits, supposedly to manage his care.

Educational models where children with varying types of disabilities, exceptionalities, and injuries were sent away from their families to obtain a physically isolated education from their families and the rest of their peers largely fell out of fashion in the United States of America amid other efforts to address civil rights issues. Legislation such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (1990), the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (2004), and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 guaranteed some legal protection in the United States of America for youth and adults as well as in education settings.

While Howard’s injury caused him to be seen as problematic in his original school setting, he built a life the best he could under exclusionary circumstances; the information we have suggests that he taught children at the school where he had been a student. Instead of planning for what individuals can do in learning settings with access to people and the best supports available within a culture or social context, educational institutions often stigmatize learners with disabilities because of what they are unable to do without support. These deficit orientations persist despite cultural historically grounded research suggesting that what individuals can do with support is a more important indicator of learning than what they can do independently (Gallimore & Tharp, 1990; John-Steiner & Mahn, 1996). A turn away from an adoration for learner independence is also crucial for positioning learners as having something to contribute to one another, to a knowledge base, and even to a community (Bekiryazıcı, 2015).

While Howard did have a physical injury with implications for his learning, the reason he could not continue in school was because the social context was disabling (Goodley et al., 2019; Marks, 1999; Sinclair, 2013). To acknowledge the nuances of understanding about how learners might be perceived as abled or disabled depending on the supports available in their environments, terms such as (dis)abled, dis/abled, and dis-abled have emerged (Rausch et al., 2019). When a disrupted form of disabled is used, it calls attention to the socially constructed nature of disability rather articulating a condition that exists within a person. The term also implicates other identities that might bring additional injustices on a person, such as race (Schiek & Chege, 2009; Smith, 2016).

Thus, it is critical to consider shifts in thinking from disability to dis/ability where decision-makers in social contexts must acknowledge their role in disabling students with unsupportive programming. Currently, many learners are at risk of receiving a disabling education, and thus there was a “necessity and urgency” to provide learners with access to the inclusive contexts (UNESCO, 1994, p. viii). For years now, many nations have made public agreements to provide inclusive learning environments through declarations, such as the Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action on Special Needs Education (UNESCO, 1994), the rectification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (United Nations, 2006), the Millennium Declaration (United Nations, 2000), and most recently, the United Nations (2016) Sustainable Development Goals. As a result of these global efforts, many countries have clarified and amended their respective laws to include access for all learners to educational opportunities at all levels.

While it seems a step in right direction to require inclusion, in theory, practical efforts have been fraught with complications. For example, Björnsdóttir and Traustadóttir (2010) conducted research in Iceland and found that inclusive efforts failed to account for identities other than the proscribed or assigned dis/ability. In another study, Pavenkov et al. (2015) compared the laws and practices around inclusion in Russia and India and found that both countries’ needs for specially trained teachers and other educators was radically out of sync with the aspirations and requirements of their laws and policies. More recently, Mavropoulou et al. (2021) captured and described sharp divides between inclusive policy and inclusive practices in Australia. As far as we know, there is no country in the world that has been able to make a strong match between social goals for inclusion with practical outcomes in education. The overall outcome is ongoing efforts to dis/able students and frame them as deviant for not being able to be successful in environments that were not designed to be more than minimally supportive.

The increase in digital technologies and distance education practices might offer some promise in terms of increasing access to teachers and other professionals with specialized training. Think of what it might have meant to Howard, his immediate family, and the generations of family that followed if he could have accessed assistive technologies to help him communicate. If he had lived in a time when private individuals and schools had access to the Internet, Howard might have even benefitted from teletherapy for speech language services and/or social support for the bullying he was enduring. However, digital and distance learning are not magic solutions to inclusion. Leading up to and now moving through the COVID-19 pandemic, educational institutions at all levels were developing a greater awareness of learners with diverse physical, emotional, and learning challenges (de Bruin, 2019; Koçdar & Bozkurt, 2022; Sniatecki et al., 2015; Weedon & Riddell 2016). Despite the heightened awareness, educational opportunities for learners with dis/abilities have been lagging. For example, while enrollment in institutions of higher education in the United States of America is increasing, degree completion rates for students with dis/abilities has been lower than those of peers (Järkestig Berggren et al., 2016). What this means is that institutions are gathering tuition, fees, and other monies from students and then not providing sufficient access to documentation of their efforts (e.g., a diploma) or providing them with the means to build an opportunity structure.

The increased use of distance learning strategies and affordances during the COVID-19 pandemic for all students can be seen as both an affordance and a barrier for learners with dis/abilities. Students will not automatically succeed merely because they are learning online or in some type of distance setting, but they are in a much stronger position to do so in an accessible environment (Layne et al., 2013; Xu & Jaggars, 2014). For example, a review of literature from Kinash et al. (2004) found that attending to the accessibility needs of students with dis/abilities held strong promise for ensuring online education would be accessible for all students, regardless of disability identity or status. After almost 20 years, this promising finding still has not found its way into the growing use of technology in distance and online learning, although other scholars have made similar findings (e.g., Hromalik & Koszalka, 2018). Without vigilance, distance and online educational settings may solidify within an ableist framing as designers, instructors, and leaders give into social and political pressures to converge around some notion of normative learning and away from alternative, disruptive approaches. Further, while it is important to design spaces around sound cognitive practices, re-envisioning digital spaces to directly confront social inequities is also necessary for learning. With these ideas in mind, we conceptualized this special issue on inclusion. The papers we accepted demonstrated promise in building the practical conception of learners who need support not as deviant bodies or minds, or as disturbers of otherwise orderly educational spaces, but rather as individuals who deserve to be included and who make contributions to educational settings and other spaces.

In “Making the Invisible, Visible: Disability in South African Education,” Paul Prinsloo and Chinaza Uleanya conducted a scoping review of online and distance education and inclusive practices for students with disabilities in South Africa. Their insight into a specific country as a context demonstrates the global problem of institutional statements of or claims to commitments to inclusion that ring hollow with students, who report feeling largely invisible and underserved. The authors offer not just recommendations but provocations for transformative action.

In “Students with Mental Health (dis)Abilities’ Storied Experiences within Distance Education,” Rose Singh conducted a narrative inquiry with students learning in a context where their mental health conditions were framed as barriers. Six participants from two Canadian universities narrated their experiences living alongside the researcher on a landscape that was set up to dis/able them rather than support them. Key tensions that emerged included the need not just to cope well enough to stay in the program but to successfully navigate the landscape together.

In “Advising Students with Disabilities in Online Learning,” José Israel Reyes and Julio Meneses employed exploratory case study methods using semi-structured interviews with 14 university student advisers at an online university in Spain. Many of the advisers in this study who were working with students who have mental health issues and chronic health challenges in a system that devalues human differences expressed frustration and deficit orientations to students. However, promise for meaningful inclusion emerged through the understanding that advisers, faculty, and staff benefitted from stronger collaboration and better coordination in their work. Advisers’ use of flexible and diverse communication methods with students also provided for better dialogue and success.

In “Promoting Potential through Purposeful Inclusive Assessment for Distance Learners,” Poppy Gibson, Rebecca Clarkson, and Mike Scott, all scholars from the United Kingdom, completed a literature review about inclusive assessment practices in online higher education classes. Based on their findings, the authors suggested three strategies: (1) Students should be more involved in decisions about assessments; (2) Students should participate in online group work, even though this requires some special planning from instructors; and (3) Instructor feedback in various modes (e.g., audio, video) is essential to the opportunity for all students to learn. Their work highlights what initial efforts might be made by instructors, designers, and program leaders to increase inclusion.

In “Identifying Accessibility Factors in Affecting Learner Inclusion in Online University Programs,” Rita Fennelly-Atkinson, Kimberly LaPrairie, and Donggil Song, all from from the United States of America, completed an exploratory mixed-methods study about universities’ online course checklists. Specifically, they evaluated the degree to which these lists met accessibility criteria and which criteria are most or least represented using Web Content Accessibility Guidelines criteria. University factors around enrollment were also examined. The authors found that online program enrollment was linked with universities’ management of accessibility compliance and the training of faculty for students’ online course accessibility. Thus, designing online spaces to be accessible supports enrollment and retention of students.

In “Higher Education Leaders’ Perspectives of Accessible and Inclusive Online Learning,” Amy Lomellini, Patrick Lowenthal, Chareen Snelson, and Jesus Trespalacios analyzed qualitative interviews from leaders in higher education institutions about accessibility and inclusion in online learning in the United States of America. The leaders contended that although there are improvements to be made, they perceived an increase interest among their colleagues in designing online educational experiences that are more inclusive and they acknowledged the critical role the instructional designers are positioned to play in making these improvements.

Finally, in “Serving Students with Disabilities in K-12 Online Learning: Daily Practices of Special Educators during the COVID-19 Pandemic,” Allison Starks asked special education teachers in the United States of America to complete an online survey and participate in interviews about online and/or remote K-12 learning with the use of technology during the pandemic. The findings of this study offer ideas about how special education teachers’ use of strategies to differentiate instruction in both hybrid content instruction as well as home-school partnerships can help support all learners.

Given the insights and findings from these contributions to this special issue, we make the following general recommendations for practice, research, and policy. For practice, the articles in this issue suggest that time spent communicating with learners about their needs for support is vital for providing inclusive opportunities. To us, this does not mean holding a focus group or giving a survey once, designing a course, and then continuing without further comment or revision. It means that every learner individually and every class collectively deserves to participate in designing their learning experience, and this must be more than the choice of whether to write a response or make a video of a spoken response. It means a constant evaluation and positioning of the best tools and the widest exposure to others as possible. Instead of language and literacy being the goals of learning, language and literacy are the tools for learning (Vygotsky, 1978).

Drawing on the position that learners deserve access to people and the best cultural tools for their work, research and development should be searching for these and collaborating with educational settings to provide the best opportunities for learning that can focus on what learners know and can do and what they want to be able to know and do. Learners who have been or are at risk for being dis/abled in educational settings should participate in tool development, testing, and evaluation, regardless of whether a tool is conceptualized as an assistive technology or not. In circularity: whatever all learners must use should be usable by all learners. We have enough research problematizing learners—we need more research that shows how environments can be re-envisioned as inclusive, supportive spaces (Mellard et al., 2020; Waitoller & Artiles, 2003).

Earlier in this editorial, we highlighted the many mismatches between intentions and actions regarding inclusive distance and online educational spaces (Björnsdóttir & Traustadóttir, 2010; Mavropoulou et al., 2021; Pavenkov et al., 2015). The articles in this special issue collectively stand as testimony to those previous findings. However, they also offer the potential for new thinking about how to enable the agencies of individuals in school spaces to have more time to communicate with students, learn from each other, try new tools and approaches, and have their own needs as human beings met. Policies about people in complex circumstances have little chance of changing procedures and outcomes unless they fully frame the entangled nature of people and their contexts (Rice, 2022; Rice & Smith, 2022).