Is disability inclusion in educational spaces an essential or an additional element?

Fifteen years ago, Nilima (name changed) and her husband, both with 90% visual impairment, sold candies at a suburban station in Chennai to sustain their family and to save money to travel to her university in a neighbouring city, and collect her B.A. Tamil degree certificates. Nilima’s aspiration was to pursue a Master’s degree. Through philanthropic intervention, she realised this dream and even secured employment as a Tamil teacher at the primary level in an established private global school.

Nilima’s determination earned public recognition and awards, crystallising a powerful narrative that resilience holds potential for social approval and appreciation. Yet, does this narrative, the school’s charitable action, and public recognition constitute sufficient systemic efforts toward disability inclusion?

Perennial question

But, by early this year, the school terminated her employment, citing her disability as incompatible with technological advancement of smart classrooms. Nilima’s situation reveals intersectional discrimination: gender, class, disability, technology, talent and the neo-liberal logic of economic return all converge to produce a precarity, which was further masked by the glorification of her resilience. The philanthropic intervention collapsed, as it addressed only her symptoms: providing educational access, employment, and income. More pointedly, what prevented a well-resourced school from embedding disability inclusion into its technological advancements?

This brings up the perennial question: Is disability inclusion in educational spaces merely an add-on? This necessitates a return to understanding what disability inclusion encompasses across visible and invisible disabilities.

Disability inclusion requires an interrelated understanding across levels of policy/practice and theoretical frameworks so that it can move beyond symptomatic redressal. In Justice and Equality in Higher Education, Lorella Terzi notes that disability inclusion developed fundamentally in opposition to the idea of special education itself. The opposition shows a historical progression from segregationist approaches that isolated students with disabilities in separate institutions to integrationist approaches that placed them in mainstream classrooms to contemporary inclusive education policies that aspire to make inclusion inherent to education itself rather than mere policy compliance. Terzi theorises this progression through Amartya Sen’s capability approach, which places human heterogeneity central to justice and equality.

Shashikala Srinivasan, in Liberal Education and its Discontents, acknowledges liberal education’s contribution to Bildung, the German concept emphasising the cultivation of the whole self through education. Contemporary liberal arts institutions in India have operationalised this vision through interdisciplinary curricula and residential models, exemplifying inclusion in their curricular and pedagogical design. Saikat Majumdar, in College: Pathways of Possibility, uses Howard Gardner’s Multiple Intelligence theory to envision a model of liberal arts beyond the conventional cognitive-intellectual domain to include linguistic, musical, spatial and other forms of intelligence.

Examples

This diversity of intelligence matters because, as Terzi argues, the dominance of cognitive-intellectual domain excludes students, particularly those with learning disabilities, who adopt alternative ways of learning. Multidisciplinary liberal arts education, by fostering multiple forms of intelligence and ways of knowing, can become inclusive, moving beyond structural integration to genuine pedagogical transformation.

Ashoka University’s Office of Learning Support emphasises that liberal arts education must reflect diversity. Initiatives like the College Readiness Programme for incoming students with disabilities ensure they have continued access to material resources and opportunities that nurture their intelligence. One Young India Fellow with visual disability mentioned that she was offered “a kind of inclusion that feels inherent to this environment and not a conscious intervention.” Similarly, Jindal Global University’s robust programmes, such as the Peer-Led Disability Inclusion Society and the Centre for Neurodivergent Studies, emphasise the mission. Through the Inclusive University Alliance, Ashoka collaborates with other institutions like Azim Premji University, Krea University and several IITs and IIMs to expand disability inclusion across more campuses.

What these stories illuminate is something more fundamental; the idiosyncratic human creativity within each person, expressed through seeing, hearing, engaging and interpreting the world. Educational institutions either amplify this art, allowing it to enrich the social fabric or they render it invisible. But what about non-elite institutions, where resources for such innovative learning environments are scarce? How do we include these spaces, where the vast majority of students study in this conversation?

The writer is a Ph.D. scholar at the International Institute of Higher Education Research and Capacity Building, O.P. Jindal Global University.