Annotated reading list

The foundational statement of the social model, and the premise on which a barrier is treated as a property of the environment rather than of the person.

Shakespeare (2013) argues that strong formulations sever disability from the body entirely, and so cannot account for impairment effects that persist once barriers are removed.

The standard critical reassessment of the strong social model, and the source of the interactional position the resources take.

Critics within disability studies argue that the reassessment concedes ground to individualised accounts of disability while the political work of the social model is unfinished.

A short comparative overview of the models, used as the reference for the models group in the glossary.

A summary rather than an original analysis; each model receives a brief treatment and the comparison is not systematic.

Locates ableism in the architecture, admissions practices and routine habits of higher education rather than in individual attitude.

The claims about institutional structure are argued from example and from rhetorical analysis, and the evidence base is North American.

Examines how institutional language positions access as an exceptional request rather than an ordinary condition of participation.

The method is interpretive analysis of institutional discourse, which yields readings of how access is spoken about rather than findings about what institutions do.

A political and relational account of disability that treats imagined futures as contested ground, used where cure narratives shape institutional expectations.

The argument is developed through feminist and queer theory and offers little that translates directly into institutional procedure.

The source of the participation principle that sets the threshold for co-design and consultation.

The cross-national evidence rests on interviews conducted in the early 1990s, and the movement it documents has since been criticised from within for centring white activists.

Explains why people who are entitled to an accommodation decline to request one, which is the basis for designing out the disclosure requirement.

The 1963 framing treats stigma as something the individual manages, which places the labour of concealment with the person rather than with the institution producing the stigma.

Practical guidance on interaction, used in the etiquette and communication resource.

Practitioner guidance from a single United States organisation, not peer-reviewed, and a list of tips can substitute a script for the judgement it is meant to support.

The source text of the ten principles of disability justice, and the account of how the framework was built through performance, mutual aid and community organising rather than in the academy. The primary reference for the disability justice resource.

Written as a primer for political education, so it sets out positions rather than arguing them against a literature. The objection raised from inside the movement is that institutions adopt the principles as language while leaving the anti-capitalist and leadership commitments aside, which Milbern named access washing.

The ten principles in their published form, cited where a resource refers to a specific principle rather than to the framework as a whole.

A statement of position rather than an argument, and it is written to be read alongside the primer. Taken on its own it is often reduced to a list, which is the use the primer was written to prevent.

The naming of access intimacy: the difference between access that has been arranged and access that has been understood. It is the standard the partnership resource is reaching for, and the reason a compliant environment can still be exhausting to move through.

Published on the author’s own blog rather than in a peer-reviewed venue, and the academic literature taking the concept up remains sparse. It is cited far more often than it is examined, which is a fact about the field rather than about the essay.

Crip ancestorship, and what passes between generations of disabled organisers when many of them do not live long. Read for why a practice names who it inherited from.

An essay, not a framework. It does not set out to generalise, and reading it as method mistakes what it is. The anthology reprint is the more stable citation; the original sits on a blog whose archive has been reorganised.

Disability, queerness and rural class experience held together rather than treated as separate axes. One of the earlier texts the disability justice collective drew on, by a member of it.

Memoir and essay, so it supplies experience and vocabulary rather than a framework that can be applied. Clare’s later work revisits several of its positions, so it should not be read as his settled view.

Black disabled artists and their history, by a co-founder of Sins Invalid and the founder of Krip-Hop Nation. The entry point to the Black disability studies strand that the disability justice resource names and does not itself carry.

Written for children and short by design, so it introduces rather than documents. Moore’s Black Disabled Ancestors (Poor Press, 2020) and the Krip-Hop graphic novel carry more of the same material at length.

The unified bona fide requirement test, and the authority for accommodation to the point of undue hardship.

Commentators have observed that the first two steps are treated as readily satisfied in practice, so the analysis rests almost entirely on the third.

The operative statute in this jurisdiction. Section 8 covers services customarily available to the public, which is the provision education falls under; section 13 covers employment.

Enforcement is complaint-driven, which places the work of initiating on the person already facing the barrier.

The federal barrier-removal framework, and the source of the broad statutory definition of a barrier used throughout the resources.

It reaches federally regulated entities only, so most post-secondary institutions in Canada fall outside its scope.

The provincial framework requiring prescribed organisations to maintain an accessibility committee, an accessibility plan and a public feedback mechanism.

It requires planning and consultation rather than outcomes, and prescribes no technical standard against which a plan can be assessed.

The comparison jurisdiction, and the origin of the procurement expectations that reach Canadian institutions through United States vendors.

United States law with a different remedial structure. It does not apply in Canada, and reasoning transplanted from it can misstate the Canadian duty.

The rights framework above the domestic statutes, and the source of the obligation to consult disabled people through their representative organisations.

Implementation depends on domestic law, and the Committee's concluding observations are not enforceable against a state party.

The instrument the later disability-specific instruments build on, used for historical framing.

A declaration rather than a treaty, and disability is not among the grounds it names.

The instrument that makes accessible-format copies lawful to produce and to move across borders, which is what governs alternative formats of published course materials.

Effect depends on ratification and on the domestic copyright exception enacted, so coverage differs between countries.

The regional instrument behind European accessibility obligations, cited where EU standards are compared with Canadian ones.

It binds EU institutions and member states implementing EU law, so its relevance in this work is comparative only.

Governs what a British Columbia public body may collect, use and disclose, which is what constrains what faculty may be told about a student's accommodation.

It sets limits on disclosure without specifying what an accommodation process should record, so practice varies between institutions under the same statute.

The governing research ethics policy in Canada, and the basis for consented, compensated and scoped participation in user evaluation.

Written for research, so its provisions map imperfectly onto usability evaluation and consultation, which frequently fall outside the definition of research requiring review.

The Supreme Court of Canada’s statement that accommodation is a shared duty. Employer, union and the person seeking accommodation each carry obligations, and a person who refuses a reasonable proposal may discharge the other party’s duty. The legal ground under the interactive process resource.

The decision does not settle how much a person must disclose before the duty is triggered, and later tribunal decisions have had to supply that. Read together with Meiorin, which supplies the analysis for the requirement itself.

Included for comparison with the federal and British Columbia instruments. It established a standards-based framework across several areas of daily life, with a stated target of an accessible Ontario by 1 January 2025, and it is the Canadian statute most often cited in guidance written elsewhere.

It creates no obligation outside Ontario, and guidance written against it circulates nationally as though it did. Progress against the 2025 target is assessed by the independent reviews the Act itself provides for, not by the Act.

The criterion-level standard digital content is assessed against, and the basis of every conformance position in the resources.

Conformance is assessed criterion by criterion and does not establish that a task can be completed; the W3C states that evaluation tools cannot determine conformance on their own.

The standard adopted in Canada without modification as CAN/ASC-EN 301 549:2024, extending beyond web content to hardware, software, documents and support services.

V3.2.1 incorporates WCAG 2.1, so the adopted Canadian standard sits a version behind current WCAG.

The procurement instrument that records conformance criterion by criterion, and the document a vendor accountability process asks for.

Reports are completed by the vendor, and nothing in the format requires that an independent evaluator produced or checked them.

The Canadian technical standard for physical space, used where a learning environment is in a room rather than on a screen.

It specifies dimensional and technical requirements and does not reach the social and procedural conditions that determine whether a compliant room is usable.

The HAAT model, which frames an assistive technology decision as a relationship between person, activity, technology and context.

Written for rehabilitation practice, so its unit of analysis is one person's setup rather than the cohort a course has to serve at once.

Sequences assistive technology decisions so that the tool is selected last, after student, environments and tasks have been described.

A practitioner framework developed for K–12 special education in the United States, without published empirical validation of the sequence it prescribes.

The global evidence on need and unmet need for assistive products, used where the scale of the gap is at issue.

Estimates are assembled from modelled and self-reported data of uneven quality across countries, so the global figures carry wide uncertainty.

The source of one-size-fits-one and of designing with rather than for, which is the framing the partnership resource uses.

A practitioner guide rather than a research output, and its claims are not accompanied by outcome evidence.

The seven principles, and the origin of the vocabulary that Universal Design for Learning later borrowed.

Formulated for physical products and environments. The principles were not derived for learning and transfer to it by analogy rather than by evidence.

The specification for accessible PDF, and the definition of the tagged structure that assistive technology needs in order to read a document in the order it was written. The technical reference under the document accessibility resource.

Sold rather than published openly, which limits who can consult the thing they are being asked to conform to. Conformance is also structural rather than experiential: a file can satisfy the specification and still be hard to use.

Captions, transcripts, audio description and sign translation set out by user need rather than by technique, which is what makes it useful for deciding which of them a given piece of media actually requires.

A Working Group Note rather than a Recommendation, so it carries no normative weight, and it has not been revised since 2015. Its account of live and automated production predates current practice.

The National Standard of Canada for accessibility in information and communication technology, published free of charge in both official languages. The Canadian reference point for platform and procurement questions.

An identical adoption of the 2021 European text, so it carries WCAG 2.1 Level AA rather than 2.2, and a later European revision will change what it means without the Canadian designation changing. It is voluntary unless a regulation, policy or contract refers to it.

The operative version of the framework, and the structure the UDL branch of the resources follows.

Published by the organisation that developed the framework, and version 3.0 postdates the evidence base, which was collected on earlier versions.

The book-length statement of the theory, used where the framework's reasoning rather than its checkpoints is at issue.

King-Sears et al. (2023) report a moderate positive combined effect of g = 0.43 across 20 studies, and reviews consistently note variable study quality and inconsistent operationalisation of what counts as a UDL intervention.

The original statement of the framework and the source of its three-principle structure.

The mapping of the three principles onto recognition, strategic and affective brain networks is offered as a rationale rather than as a tested mechanism, and later CAST publications rely on it less.

Backward design, used to hold outcomes, evidence and instruction in alignment so that flexibility can be added without loosening what is assessed.

A planning heuristic rather than a tested intervention; its wide adoption in practice is not matched by direct experimental evidence for the framework itself.

The unified account of validity, which is what makes an inaccessible assessment a measurement problem rather than a fairness courtesy.

The unified framework is difficult to operationalise, and in practice it is frequently reduced to a checklist of evidence types rather than an argument about an inference.

The evidence base for presenting multimedia so that it does not impose load unrelated to the material.

Much of the evidence comes from short laboratory studies with undergraduate participants, and generalisation to full courses and to disabled learners is not established.

The consensus synthesis on learning, transfer and the development of expertise.

Published in 2000, and several of the areas it summarises have moved substantially since; a successor volume was issued in 2018.

Autonomy, competence and relatedness, used where learners attend by choice and engagement cannot be assumed.

The three needs are inferred constructs, and their measurement varies enough across studies that effect sizes are not straightforwardly comparable.

Explains how practice changes through participation rather than through instruction, which is the basis of the capacity-building work.

The concept was developed descriptively and has been criticised for being applied prescriptively to groups assembled by an institution, which are not the communities the book describes.

Andragogy, used for its assumptions about self-direction, prior experience and readiness in adult cohorts.

Hartree (1984) argued that andragogy lacks an epistemological base and that its assumptions read as prescriptions for what an adult learner should be; the empirical support is thin and the adult–child distinction is not well established.

A shared vocabulary for talking about evaluation with institutional stakeholders who already use it.

Holton (1996) argued that the four levels form a taxonomy of outcomes rather than a model, because the causal relationships between levels are assumed rather than specified or tested.

Culturally relevant pedagogy, used in the equity-centred design resource where accessibility and cultural responsiveness meet.

Developed from a study of eight teachers of African American students in one United States district; extension to other populations and settings requires argument rather than assumption.

COM-B, used to establish whether a gap between accessibility knowledge and accessible practice is capability, opportunity or motivation before anything is designed.

COM-B organises determinants rather than predicting which intervention will work, so the diagnosis it supports does not by itself select a remedy.

A vocabulary for institutional change that senior stakeholders already share, used for communication rather than as a method.

Appelbaum et al. (2012) found the model derives from Kotter's own practitioner observation and that no formal study validates the eight steps as a whole.

Frames why faculty development changes what people know without changing what they build, which is the problem the capacity resource addresses.

The evidence is corporate case material selected to illustrate the argument, and the mechanisms proposed were not tested against alternatives.

The knowledge-to-action cycle, used for moving published method into institutional practice.

Developed in health services, where a defined practice community and an identifiable clinical decision exist; teaching has neither in the same form.

Systems framing for institutional change, used where a barrier recurs because the structure producing it was never addressed.

The five disciplines are presented as an integrated account but have not been validated as one, and the book is practitioner literature rather than research.

What a disability resource office is for, what it is accountable for, and how such an office assesses its own practice. Used as the description of the professional function that this practice defers to rather than performs.

Written for the United States, where the framework is the ADA and Section 504 rather than provincial human rights legislation and a statutory duty to accommodate. The functions transfer; the accountability structure does not.

The standard vocabulary for describing functioning in relation to a context, and the basis for reasoning from functional impact rather than from diagnosis.

Criticised for a classification complex enough to impede implementation, and for a structure that some argue reinstates a clinical frame under a biopsychosocial name.

The first global synthesis of prevalence and barriers, cited for historical framing.

Published in 2011 and superseded in several respects, including the headline prevalence estimate, which later WHO reporting revised upward.

The current global estimate and the health-equity framing used where disability is situated as a population-level concern.

Prevalence estimates depend on the instrument used to identify disability, so the figure is not directly comparable with national survey figures.

The national source for Canadian prevalence and for the barrier types disabled Canadians report encountering.

Disability is identified through a screening question set, so the resulting figure reflects that instrument's definition and cannot be set beside figures produced by other national surveys.

The argument that disabled people constitute a health disparity population, used in the health and patient education resource.

United States data and United States policy context; several of the disparities identified are mediated by insurance arrangements that do not exist in the same form in Canada.

The episodic disability framework, and the basis for designing for conditions that fluctuate rather than persist at a constant level.

Derived from one condition and a small qualitative sample, so extension to other episodic conditions proceeds by analogy.

Health literacy as an outcome of education rather than a fixed attribute of a patient, used in patient and public education work.

The three-level model is conceptual, and the measurement of health literacy remains contested, with instruments capturing reading and numeracy more readily than the critical level the model describes.

Lived experience of disabled learners and physicians, and the treatment of technical standards in clinical education.

United States medical education, where accreditation requirements and the drafting of technical standards differ from Canadian practice.

Situates disability alongside the other structural conditions that distribute health, which is the framing the health resources use.

Published in 2008, and its recommendations are addressed to states, so they translate only indirectly into what an institution can decide.