‘It’s not About Success, it’s About Access’: Narratives of Post-Secondary Students Labelled with Invisible Intellectual Disabilities Seeking Accommodations

This Major Research Paper centres the narratives of and the injustices experienced by postsecondary students labelled with invisible intellectual disabilities (IID). Specifically, I center the narratives of these students when accessing accommodation services at various educational institutions in Ontario. Most of the scholarly literature confirms there is a lack of insider experience used to inform policy and research. The aim of this study was to listen and amplify the insider voices. Three students labelled with IID’s who were/had been registered with accommodations support participated in this narrative inquiry. Each person was individually interviewed, and the interviews were recorded, transcribed and reviewed by participants. Both narrative and thematic analyses were used to focus on the stories and the key findings. Importantly, these findings speak to the many ways in which students labelled with IID’s have suffered in silence, enduring injustice during their post-secondary years by both faculty members and so-called accommodation centres.