One way to cultivate a cripped classroom is to create a flexible classroom environment - this means (1) offering alternative ways for students to show that they have learned the material whether it be through (a) modifying the entire classroom environment - for instance allowing individual one-on-one classroom settings rather than group settings (b) building flexibility into individuals assignments in terms of ways knowledge is shown and (c) building flexibility into how you expect students to show participation.

Flexible Environments

Faculty can create more interdependent and cripped classrooms by making sure that supports are available in how they structure their class from the beginning instead of being put in on an individual basis when students are struggling - examples of built-in supports include course note-takers and flexible deadlines for assignments.

Built-in Supports

Offering group office hours can be a great way to crip office hours since many students feel anxious taking one-on-one with their professor and group office hours allow students to realize they are not the only person asking for help.

Cripping Office Hours

While peer mentoring, academic coaches, and student peer tutoring can foster interdependence unless faculty crip their courses these supplemental supports serve only as a band-aid to academic ableism.

Supplemental Supports

- Flexible Environments
- Built-in Supports
- Cripping Office Hours
- Supplemental Supports

University of Wisconsin - Madison

Floyd's example shows us a cripped course grounded in interdependence.  This classroom environment highlights the concept of access intimacy. In this course students success was tied to each other and Floyd was able to thrive because the class was made accessible through interdependence. Having the classroom experience based in interdependence lessened the power dynamic between students and professors, make students feel more safe sharing their access needs, and this dynamic leveraged using collaboration with peers to go beyond the legal bare minimum of access by offering extended test times.

Interdependence in a Cripped Classroom

The author's acknowledge how there is a tension between ensuring student access needs are met and requiring disclosure. While the author's ultimately decide that a cripped classroom should not require student disclosure for accessibility to be present there is noting that there is a tension between access and disclosure.

Tension between Access and Disclosure

Abrams, E. J., Floyd, C. E., & Abes, E. S. (2024). Prioritizing Crip Futures: Applying Crip Theory to Create Accessible Academic Experiences in Higher Education. Disability Studies Quarterly, 43(4). https://doi.org/10.18061/dsq.v43i4.8270

Prioritizing Crip Futures: Applying Crip Theory to Create Accessible Academic Experiences in Higher Education

Access intimacy was coined by Mia Mingus to name the elusive comfort when someone truly gets your access needs without needing to put in strenuous effort to self advocate for your needs, or how you relax when all your access needs are being met. Note Access Intimacy can be achieved regardless of the views of disability held by the person being meeting said access needs.

Access Intimacy

Meaningful faculty-student relationships built through meeting with students individually and creating opportunities to get to know their students at the beginning of the semester can be a powerful tool to facilitate trust needed for interdependence. This trust is needed for students to feel comfortable disclosing access needs that go beyond legal compliance especially with so many disabled students having experiences of ableism in the accommodation disclosure process.

Faculty-Student Relationships as a tool of Interdependence

Ways Faculty Can Build Cripped Classrooms

Abes, Abrams, and Floyd (the authors) note that while Universal Design is a way faculty can work against academic ableism and create more accessible classes that Universal Design still relies on often non-fluid definitions of disability and assumes that disabled students would have the same predictable needs throughout the course, this is how the authors differentiate between a class that utilizes universal design and a cripped class.

Universal Design vs. Cripped Classes

While the authors gesture at the idea that access needs can change throughout a semester, I think that the authors fail to properly address the idea of conflicting access needs. Conflicting access needs is the term used to describe when students have access needs that are completely or nearly mutually exclusive taking into account the physical space. One example of conflicting access needs would be a student needed dimmed lights because of sensory sensitivities and another student needing bright overhead lights because they are low-vision. There is this idea that we can make spaces that are completely accessible but this gets complicated by conflicting access needs.

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