Price posits that justification of access needs is often performed because within higher education accommodations systems, accommodations are seen as a scarce and limited resource. In this framing of accommodations, justification is used as a way of determining who gets the benefits of access.

Justification of Access Needs and Accommodations

Price notes that disclosure, or the need to reveal one's disability, is not always positive or negative, but academic ableism sometimes demands disclosure out of a need to justify access needs.

University of Wisconsin - Madison

Henry is a deaf white man and university lecturer who recently lost the ability to speak orally due to surgery. After becoming nonspeaking, Henry was assigned an online-only teaching schedule. This led to jealousy and resentment from his colleagues who wanted to teach all their classes online. Henry was asked by his department chair for permission to discuss his lack of speech in a virtual department meeting to explain Henry's accommodations. While Henry didn't mind it, it is still compelled surveillance that Henry's department chair saw the answer to resentment from department members to be revealing Henry's disability. 

Example of Compelled Surveillance: Henry and Disability Disclosure

Price, M. (2024). Crip Spacetime. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478059370

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