Unreasonable adjustments: the additional unpaid labour of academics with disabilities

Abstract

Two recent contributions to this section have drawn attention to the barriers which academics with disabilities have to navigate in academia where ableism “is endemic” (Brown and Leigh, 2018: 4). Hannam-Swain (2018) highlighted the additional intellectual, emotional and physical labour required of her as a disabled PhD student, and Brown and Leigh (2018) queried “where are all the disabled and ill academics?” However, Brown and Leigh primarily focus on those with invisible “conditions” and the dilemmas raised by disclosure in a context where such conditions negate academic status and credibility. In contrast, since my “disability” is visible, I do not share the dilemma/“luxury” of secrecy. My presence announces my status before me, and this negates my personhood altogether in academic settings. It also places a burden of additional unpaid labour upon me which has significant mental health and career impacts as well as violating principles of equality.

Keywords:

• Academic
• disability
• discrimination
• equality
• unpaid labour
• university

Many universities promote themselves as positive environments for equality and diversity, and yet this is not the experience of disabled academics. Hannam-Swain described the additional unpaid labour that she has to undertake as “an extra workload which is equivalent to having another part-time job” (2018: p.5) and Brown and Leigh highlight the lack of (visibly) disabled or ill academics in the university. In this piece I respond to both papers: here I am, a visibly disabled academic, and this is what I have to endure in twenty-first century British universities. I focus on the extra work which I have to undertake which is neither paid, nor acknowledged in my workload and which places significant physical, emotional and mental burdens on me¹. These burdens are particularly acute when I take up a new position or join a new institution – a context where time is already overburdened for any new staff in terms of orientating oneself to the new role, institutional culture and environment, writing new courses and teaching material, and undertaking mandatory training. What is particularly troubling is that much of the additional burden emerges from the failures of institutions to understand and/or implement their legal obligations (in relation to the 2010 Equality Act and health and safety at work legislation²) or to enact their espoused ethos of equality, diversity and respect in the workplace. Consequently there is significant additional labour required of me to ensure that my employer has two very basic provisions in place, first, accessible teaching rooms and secondly, a Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan (PEEP) – both of which are legal requirements.

One of the most commonplace obstacles I encounter in a new role is being timetabled into wheelchair accessible lecture and seminar rooms, something which is basic and essential for me to be able to do my job. Notwithstanding my having clearly stated throughout the recruitment process that I require an accessible environment (and having also evidenced this at interview by showing up in a wheelchair (or previously with a mobility scooter and crutches)), this is often one of the most difficult hurdles to overcome. First, there is often only a limited amount of lecture and seminar rooms in any university which have wheelchair accessible presentation areas and AV equipment. Secondly, and more significantly, I encounter significant resistance to being scheduled into these rooms despite my clearly stated need for them. During my career I have been told that I cannot be scheduled into wheelchair accessible teaching rooms for a variety of reasons including: that to do so would involve ‘disrupting’ someone else and changing their timetable (even though they are not a wheelchair user and therefore do not specifically need that room); that accessibility is not a ‘first priority’ of timetabling; that I will have to ‘make do’ with a ‘not ideal’ room (e.g. one which has no emergency egress); that the university could deem it ‘reasonable’ to expect me to go downstairs on my bottom in some situations rather than reorganising my timetable to ensure I have reliably accessible rooms (the last was said by an ‘Equality Officer’ in defence of timetabling).

Moreover, in some universities a teaching room is deemed ‘accessible’ if a student who is a wheelchair user can access it, even if the presentation area is not accessible to a wheelchair user because it can only be reached via steps. As a result, I often have to visit all the venues on my timetable to ensure that they are accessible and, indeed, some institutions directly request that I do this. This puts me in the incongruous position of being a person with limited mobility being expected to undertake a physical tour of campus in order to access-audit my teaching rooms. I also frequently end up embroiled in lengthy and unproductive email and telephone discussions which only result in the demand for me to attend a face-to-face meeting for my requests to be addressed. This whole process is hugely physically and mentally demanding and it places a significant and unnecessary additional burden of work and (di)stress upon me. It also seems utterly absurd that there is such resistance to, and difficulty in providing, something as basic as wheelchair accessible teaching spaces for a lecturer who is a wheelchair user.

Finally, when I am provided with an accessible teaching room, it is often made difficult, or sometimes even dangerous, to access because of wider issues which are not taken into account. For example, in one university I was required travel to a part of the campus with an ‘accessible’ teaching room where the journey involved having to wheel in the road because there were not cut kerbs on all the pavements along the way. (I did make the university aware of this, but because the council were planning to introduce cut kerbs on that route it was deemed suitable). Another university scheduled back-to-back lectures and seminars in ‘accessible’ rooms at the far ends of the campus.

Reflecting on these experiences I suggest that there are two interrelated reasons for universities having such difficulty in meeting such a basic requirement. The first is that there is still a general culture of disbelief within universities (and wider society) that it is possible to have a disability and to be an academic – I suspect that this is also quite gendered and the fact that I am also female further compounds such disbelief. Thus, while many universities have now just about accepted that it is possible to have disability and to learn, and have therefore subsequently made some minimal provisions for disabled students (although not without frequent gaps and failings), the possibility that a woman could have disability and have something to teach, seems beyond credibility. This unspoken belief then leads to assumptions that my request for accessible rooms is really just me being awkward/difficult and placing an unnecessary burden on someone else’s workload. As such, staff respond in kind by being awkward and obstructive and increasing my workload by either refusing my requests altogether or insisting that I have to arrange a face-to-face meeting if I wish them to be addressed.

This whole process is then repeated over and over again for a range of other issues that I have to contend with. For example, as a disabled person I have to have a PEEP to ensure that my employer has provisions in place for me to exit a building in an emergency situation. Few universities have fire evacuation lifts in their buildings and many simply fix standard Evac Chairs to stairwells so that they have, in theory, covered their legal obligations in regard to the evacuation of disabled people. However, these Evac Chairs are not suitable for many disabled people and the government’s legal guidance specifically reminds employers that ‘it is not always possible for wheelchair users to transfer into an evacuation chair or to maintain a sitting position once seated in one. Therefore, evacuation chairs should not be considered as an automatic solution to the escape requirements of wheelchair users’ (HM Government, 2007: 20)³. However, this caveat is rarely embedded in policy and practice and, because I am unable to sit in the standard Evac Chair, I am once again positioned as being difficult/awkward in regard to establishing a PEEP and I am frequently responded to in kind. In my experience so far, only one university was immediately amenable to my situation and purchased equipment which allowed me to escape from the building where my office was located and combined this with locating all of my teaching and meetings in the (only) building with a fire evacuation lift. In most other situations I have experienced a long drawn out process with university Fire Officers who are resistant to the idea that Evac Chairs are not universally accessible, who express varying levels of disbelief that I cannot use them, and who do not seem familiar with the government’s legal guidance. Since Fire Officers are often male, there also seems to be a gendered dynamic to these interactions, where it is difficult for the officer to accept – even though by their own admission they have never had to deal with an academic who is a wheelchair-user before – that a woman in a wheelchair may be well informed in this regard, perhaps even more so than they are because I have to go through this process with every new employer. In all situations, the responsibility falls on me to ensure all relevant parties have access to the legal guidance on the emergency evacuation of disabled people, to source and cost appropriate equipment and to locate relevant suppliers. Once again, this places a significant burden of extra work on me in order for my employer to meet their legal obligations. I have also often been directly requested to undertake unpaid and unacknowledged work in order for universities to improve their practices, including working with HR to develop an ‘on-boarding’ policy for disabled staff, reviewing current fire evacuation policies, and liaising with architects to ensure building designs are wheelchair accessible.

Other issues I have to deal with include negotiating access to a disabled parking bay, ensuring that meetings and university training sessions are held in accessible rooms and the provision of accessible bathrooms. This frequently involves having to escalate issues to a formal complaint/grievance in order to have them resolved, processes which involve yet more work for me and is often exacerbated by the fact that HR, the union and/or senior management are not located in accessible buildings!

These lengthy processes/battles require a huge amount of emotional labour and resilience on my part, which is compounded by hostile, patronising and sometimes bullying responses from university staff when I progress them. As such, these experiences have significant detrimental impacts on my mental health and my career progression. At the same time, much of this additional burden not only directly contravenes the Equality Act in terms of the failure to make reasonable adjustments (e.g. providing an accessible teaching room or toilet), but also constitutes ‘discrimination arising from disability’³. It is a sad reflection on contemporary British universities that there is such a consistent failure to fully understand and implement the Equality Act nearly ten years after it passed into law. It is also an equally poor state of affairs that universities seem unable to understand or practise basic equality, dignity and respect towards their disabled employees. Finally, it is utterly unjustifiable that these failings by employers result in burdens of suffering, additional unpaid work and career limitations for the very employees that these laws and policies are supposed to protect.

Notes

1 In this paper I reflect on my experiences in a number of different universities. One of my former positions concluded with a pre-tribunal legal settlement which included a confidentiality agreement for both parties. As such, none of the experiences I discuss in this paper are drawn from my experience in that institution. I have also not named the individual institutions where each of the incidents occurred in order to avoid any suggestion of ‘personal criticism’ and to highlight the universality of these problems.

2 Under the 2010 Equality Act employers have a responsibility to provide ‘reasonable adjustments’ to accommodate staff with disabilities – although ‘reasonableness’ can be interpreted in a wide variety of ways by employers (see comments by Equality Officer, above). Health and safety at work legislation (e.g. HM Government, 2007) stipulates that an employer must ensure that all employees can evacuate from the workplace in an emergency situation.

3 Under the Equality Act, discrimination arising from disability is a situation where ‘A person (A) discriminates against a disabled person (B) if – (a) A treats B unfavourably because of something arising in consequence of B’s disability, and (b) A cannot show that the treatment is a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim’ (HM Government, 2010: 8).