While the Disabled Academics Study does not account for the experiences of disabled students, by design, this invisibilization of slow rolling also impacts students with students who have hard times accessing accommodations because of lack of biocertification (often lack of access to diagnostic paperwork), or whose accommodations get implemented late or midway through the semester are immediately cast as lazy or unprepared because of a lack of understanding by non-disabled faculty members and graduate students about the slow rolling of accommodations.

Effects of this invisibilization on Disability Students

Price notes that when slow rolling becomes visible, for instance in the case of Jacky needing more course releases, apologies are routinely offered along with even more harmful delays, in the case of Jacky having to request more course releases from the Dean and Provost, apologies are seen by academic systems as a form of redress despite the fact that they do nothing to change the harms occuring.

When Slow Rolling Becomes Visible

Price notes that slow rolling and its effects are often invisibilized because of dominant narratives in academic that academic accommodations are smooth, linear and instituted promptly, and that the process of accommodations is easily navigable.

University of Wisconsin - Madison

Slow Rolling describes how institutional processes, often those that are made to ensure access and inclusion, are often purposefully designed to move slowly to discourage people from going through these systems because having less people requesting access is better from an economic point of view. This concept is also called "rationing by hassle", "dragging", and existing within "not-yet-time." These systems are also described as making access "slow to come and fast to expire."

Slow Rolling

Price, M. (2024). Crip Spacetime. Duke University Press.

Crip Spacetime

Invisibilization of Slow Rolling

Participants in the Disabled Academics Study noted that slow rolling makes accommodations both time consuming to put in place and time consuming to use often causing disabled academics to pay for their own accommodations, give up opportunities, or leave their job. 

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