Eliminating Institutional and Structural Ableism in Higher Education Policies and Programs in Kenya

Abstract

Inclusive and equitable higher education is a provision that is established within the national policy framework of Kenya (1). The fundamental legal principle of non-discrimination is clearly operationalized with the assistance of such strategic documents like the Sector Policy on Learners and Trainees with Disabilities (2). The policy advocates inclusive education as the general precept of the entire education system that constitutes a major paradigm shift in lieu of earlier practices. At the institutional level, universities have responded by coming up with individual policies that ensure equal access and participation (3). However, a great implementation gap cripples these intentions (4). This gap between the deliberate element of progressive policy and observable fact is what makes the core of institutional and structural ableism in higher education (5).

Institutional ableism occurs as routine practices and circumstances in universities, which discriminate against disabled students and staff in a systematic way. It is perpetuated most often by negligence and failure to build disability-sensitive structures and not by deliberate malice. Institutional ableism is not limited to individual institutions. It consists of the broader attitudes of society, past injustices, and national distributions of resources that pre-determines barriers long before a student submits a university application (6). The climax of this epidemiological tragedy is the under-representation of students with disabilities in higher learning education, which is the direct outcome of systems working under the default premise of able-body standard